A New Day at Midnight
by origamifrog23
Summary: In an alternate universe where heroes are persecuted rather than celebrated, Mohinder and Peter meet under slightly different circumstances, each hiding dangerous secrets. Warning: slash
1. Chapter 1

**Title: **A New Day at Midnight

**Characters/Pairings: **Mohinder/Peter, discussions of past Peter/Claude

**Rating: **R

**Warnings: **AU, character death (past tense), angst

**Spoilers: **Written during the hiatus following "Parasite," so anything up through there just to be safe. Loosely shares some themes with the episode "Five Years Gone" but was primarily written without prior knowledge of the episode's content.

**Summary: **In an alternate universe where heroes are persecuted rather than celebrated, Mohinder and Peter meet under different circumstances, each hiding dangerous secrets.

**Disclaimer: **Heroes and the associated characters don't belong to me.

**A New Day at Midnight**

**Part 1/19 **

Eden's apartment had been empty only a week when Mohinder, sitting at his computer, heard a commotion outside his door followed by a loud and vicious curse in an unfamiliar voice. He'd been hearing the shuffling footsteps in the hallway all morning but had not been persuaded to concern himself with the building's new occupant until now. The very painful sounding crack of what Mohinder could only guess was someone's head hitting the concrete on the stairwell's nearest landing had him wincing in sympathy and on his feet in moments. He was careful to close out of the screen on his computer before stepping out into the corridor.

"Hello?" he said into the emptiness he was met with, noting the trail of debris that led from the top of the stairs downward. An overturned cardboard box rested three steps down. Below that, a young man lay sprawled as expected on the landing, looking dazed in the way most people did when one moment they were balanced and upright and the next they were on the ground, still trying to process what had happened in between.

"Well, that was embarrassing," the stranger said after a moment, pushing himself up into a sitting position. His fingers went immediately to the back of his head. He hissed as they met with what must have been a tender spot before pulling them away, checking for blood. There was none.

Mohinder descended the first few stairs, pausing to pick up the box that had fallen with its owner. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"Yeah," the stranger said, sheepish now, annoyed with himself. He brushed his hair out of his eyes and the dirt off his clothes. "I just lost my balance, I guess. I should be fine as soon as the stars go away." He blinked owlishly in Mohinder's general direction without actually seeming to see Mohinder. "Wow. I always thought that was a figure of speech. Seeing stars." He blinked again as if a part of him enjoyed the effect.

"I wouldn't know," Mohinder said. "You should probably put some ice on your head."

The stranger snorted. "It's my ass I'm worried about," he replied. "It's bad if I can't feel it anymore, right?"

Mohinder was beginning to wonder if perhaps he shouldn't have simply gone with his original instinct and refrained from associating with his new neighbor.

"I imagine the numbness is a blessing, judging from how hard and how far you fell," Mohinder said dryly. "Perhaps you can ask whoever is helping you move in to keep an eye on it for you. So to speak."

Mohinder turned, intending to climb back up the stairs and close himself in his apartment so that he could go back to work and forget that any of this had ever happened. But the stranger spoke before he had the chance to fully get away.

"There isn't anyone helping me," the other man said, pushing himself painfully to his feet. He wobbled slightly but managed to steady himself using the railing at his side. Mohinder noticed he was favoring his left leg slightly and still couldn't seem to properly focus his vision. "I'm kind of on my own."

Mohinder sighed. Against his better judgment he said, "I think I have some ice in my apartment, if you think you can make it up the stairs this time."

The stranger nodded and pulled himself up the stairs, making it to the top without incident. He paused every now and then to pick up his scattered possessions along the way, tucking them under his arm so he could offer his hand to Mohinder, a crooked, socially awkward half smile pulling up one side of his mouth. "I'm Peter," he said.

"Mohinder Suresh," Mohinder replied, taking the proffered hand briefly.

Seeing Peter up close for the first time, Mohinder was startled to discover that the man taking over Eden's apartment was not quite as he had appeared from the distance of ten steps down. Like a Monet painting seen from too close, Mohinder could now see the brush strokes and textures that partially belied the original naivete Mohinder had perceived in Peter. Before, Mohinder would have inferred Peter was nothing more than a young man recently graduated from college, out on his own for the first time. Now he saw the barely visible lines of premature age, the kind that could only be brought on by the weight of some unnamed experience. He began to wonder what had brought Peter to this apartment building, to New York.

Peter followed Mohinder into his apartment without comment. Mohinder had inherited the place from his father on coming to New York and it wasn't without its quirky details, the most prominent of which included an incomplete map tacked to the wall directly across from the door, a number of strings hanging limply from it, leading nowhere. Peter politely pretended not to notice and Mohinder didn't explain that after his father's death, this had been among the first things they'd taken. For their investigation, they'd said.

Mohinder moved to the icebox while Peter lingered at the front of the apartment.

"Let me guess," Peter said as Mohinder rooted around for a towel to wrap the ice in. "You're a professor or something." He gestured to the stack of textbooks that sat atop Mohinder's desk.

Mohinder considered his answer. "I was," he admitted. "These days I spend most of my time on research." He handed Peter the ice, now wrapped in a musty dish towel he had found under the sink. "Is this your first time to New York?"

Peter smiled mysteriously. "Not exactly," he said. "I'm from here. I was just kind of…gone for a while."

"I see," Mohinder said, though he didn't.

The natural progression of the conversation should have led Mohinder to ask what it was Peter had left New York for and why he had decided to come back. But questions like these were dangerous, increasing the chance for a misguided reciprocation Mohinder couldn't risk. With this in mind, he decided to hold back.

"I suppose you're my new neighbor, then," he said lamely instead.

"Yeah, I guess so," Peter replied, glancing over his shoulder and into the hallway as if to confirm his new apartment hadn't gone anywhere while his back was turned. The neglected ice was beginning to melt in the towel, soaking it and dripping through Peter's fingers onto the floor. He didn't appear to notice. "It was pretty lucky. The landlord said the girl who was living there left kind of abruptly." He turned back to Mohinder. "Did you know her?"

Mohinder nodded, thinking of Eden and her slow suicide of macaroni and cheese. But that wasn't what Peter was asking him. No question that they were both familiar with the posters, the television ads, the newspaper articles. Keep a close eye on those around you, they said, each in their own way. Report any suspicious behavior to the proper authorities. Your safety and the safety of those you love depends on it. Mohinder thought of his father's body, barely recognizable in that bleak morgue.

If there had been more to Eden than what was readily apparent, she'd had the decency not to violate Mohinder's opportunity for plausible deniability by sharing any of it with him. For that, he was grateful. He liked her well enough and had no desire to be put in a position where that kind of decision was necessary. Not after what had happened to his father.

To Peter, he said, "Her name was Eden. She knocked on my door every now and then. Made sure I hadn't buried myself in my work too deeply. That I was still alive." He swallowed, feeling surprisingly emotional at the memory of her sweet smile, knowing he wouldn't see it again.

"I can see how that might be easy to miss," Peter commented. "Your being alive, I mean. You were so quiet. I had no idea anyone else was up here."

Something in that sounded like an untruth, but Mohinder didn't tax himself by trying to figure out what.

"How's your head?" he said, moving around Peter so that he could examine the wound himself. "I don't see a bump." He reached up his fingers to feel for one, but Peter pulled away before he could make contact.

"I'm okay," he said. "Really."

"I suppose you must be if you're dripping all over my floor like that," Mohinder said, gesturing to the puddle that had gathered by Peter's feet, the ice pack now almost fully melted.

Peter looked down. "Oh," he said. "Sorry. I didn't even notice."

"It's all right," Mohinder said, taking the towel from Peter and putting it in the sink where the ice could continue its deterioration without causing any further damage. "I'm not going to ask about your backside. I hope you don't mind."

Another crooked smile played on Peter's lips, though he made an unsuccessful attempt at covering it with a mock-serious expression when he said, "No, I understand."

"Do you need help with the rest of your things?" Mohinder asked, the offer escaping him before he had time to think about it. Apparently the reminder of Eden's absence had done something to his former reticence. That or he was even less eager to return to his work than he'd realized.

"Actually, that was the last box," Peter said. "But I could use some help picking up what I dropped in the hallway. You know, if you're bored."

"If it hasn't been stolen yet, you mean," Mohinder said.

"True," Peter said. "It has been out there by itself for all of fifteen minutes." He made a show of checking his watch. "Closer to twenty." More seriously, he added, "It's nothing that anyone would want."

Mohinder refrained from pointing out that this would hardly be a deterrent for would-be thieves, especially in this building. Instead, he gestured for Peter to lead the way back into the corridor where they began gathering the scattered belongings--all of which were present and accounted for, if slightly worse for the wear. As they worked, Mohinder began to think that Peter was right. These were sentimental objects, talismans in the form of souvenirs from places both exotic and familiar. They would be of no interest to anybody, nor would the handful of pictures, only one of which had been deemed important enough for a frame. It rested face down on the floor halfway between Mohinder and Peter. They both reached for it at once, but Mohinder happened to get there first, turning the frame over to expose the cracked glass and the image it had been meant to protect.

Mohinder drew in a breath as Peter froze, waiting for him to absorb what he was seeing, watching him closely for a reaction. Not generally given to nosiness, Mohinder nevertheless scrutinized the picture, seeing a much younger Peter standing in cap and gown next to another man, the formality of their pose doing nothing to lessen the impression of obvious affection between them as they leaned slightly toward one another, properly centering themselves in the camera's frame.

The second man was significantly older than Peter--at least a decade between them--but their physical similarities were enough to place them as brothers. This in and of itself was not disturbing.

Like anyone who had been living in New York during the election, Mohinder recognized the face of Peter's brother immediately as one he had seen attached to countless campaign posters and newspaper headlines. Nathan Petrelli had been a promising political candidate, a shoo in for the election until the moment his body and the bodies of his wife and children had been found in their home the morning before voters went to the polls. The investigation into his death had been a popular news topic for weeks, the case still unsolved. Still, the popular rumor was that it had been one of Them.

Mohinder had a feeling he knew why Peter had left New York.

Catching sight of Peter's grim, pained expression, Mohinder handed the picture back to him without comment. Together, they stood and walked into Peter's apartment, where in silence they set their burdens down along with the boxes Peter had already managed to carry successfully to his new living space. Wordlessly, Mohinder turned to go but was halted in the doorway when Peter spoke.

"I suck at macaroni and cheese," he said. "Even the stuff that comes in the box. I always undercook it. But I can stop by once in a while and make sure you're still alive. If you want."

Mohinder nodded, glancing at Peter over his shoulder. "All right," he said. "I'll do the same."

Even as he walked back to his apartment, it occurred to Mohinder that there was something strange about what Peter had said. It wasn't until hours later, going over their conversation in his mind while watching endless streams of nonsense flow past his eyes on a computer screen that Mohinder realized in what little he'd said of Eden that he'd never mentioned her macaroni and cheese.


	2. Chapter 2

**A New Day at Midnight**

**Part 2/19**

When Peter had left New York nine months ago, just after Nathan's death, it was Claude who'd told him in his very Claude way that Peter wouldn't stay away forever. The implication was that Peter didn't have the conviction to disappear completely. But he'd done a reasonably good job of it and at least he had the satisfaction of knowing it wasn't weakness that had brought him back.

The city felt haunted to him now. All he could see when he walked the streets were all the spaces where Nathan's campaign posters used to hang, replaced now by ones that showed the faces of various murder victims, all supposedly killed at the hands of someone with special abilities. A lot of times, these images were accompanied by the tearful pleas of surviving family members--usually children, if they were available--basically encouraging the citizens of the world to use paranoia as a prevention strategy: Report everything and everyone no matter how imaginary the transgression or expect the worst to happen.

The posters had existed for years, along with the public service announcements and screaming headlines, partly because of people like Sylar and the radioactive man out West, partly because people were naturally afraid of what they didn't understand and the government was all too happy to encourage this fear for its own purposes. Still, Peter was disheartened to see how the posters had multiplied in the time since he'd been away. The city blocks were covered with them now. He'd even seen a few on people's apartment doors when he'd started looking for a place to live now that he was back. New York had turned into a very dangerous place and Peter no longer had his brother to protect him in it.

Of course, Nathan's idea of protecting Peter had always been to lecture him on the virtues of living life as a normal man. A subject he knew pretty well, considering he was a flying man who made a point of not flying for the sake of his family and his political career. When asked about his position on the rights of people with special abilities, Nathan had always gone off about how all the government really wanted from "them" was that they live peacefully and normally. If they didn't follow this simple request, the consequences should be harsh. Nathan's goal was to be the living example of this platform. He wanted Peter to do the same.

But Peter watched from his window as the race to control and contain evolution turned to hysteria. People like himself were being harassed, tortured, brutally killed and no one was doing anything to stop it. He began having visions, ones that helped him in his deliberate mission to seek out others like himself. Together, they formed a loose kind of resistance that served as a kind of underground railroad without the benefit of free states as the panic spread from country to country. Not only were people with special abilities the new serial killers and rapists, they were also, in some places, the new weapons of mass destruction.

Peter had hidden his association with the resistance--that he was one of its leaders--from Nathan but Nathan had figured it out anyway when Peter, unable to properly control his own ability to absorb the powers of others, had overexposed himself and ended up in the hospital. Nathan had begged him to stop. Peter had refused, fully expecting that his brother would turn him in as soon as the election was won. Instead, when the government started asking questions, Nathan chose to protect Peter rather than hand him over. Nathan's death and the death of his family was as much a punishment for Nathan's defiance as it was an attempt to silence Peter. It had worked.

Ironic that Nathan got what he wanted from his brother only after he was dead. For close to a year now, Peter had suppressed not only his politics, but his abilities as well. He had lived as Nathan requested: allowing himself to bleed when he got cut, getting up to get the television remote rather than calling it to him, reading people's body language for clues to the content of their thoughts rather than reading their minds. Staying visible at all times even as he struggled to blend in and become as unremarkable as possible. That he'd once been able to do all those things--regeneration, telekinesis, telepathy, invisibility--seemed like a dream to him now. He'd even forgotten how to fly.

Then the visions had started to come back in dribs and drabs. Nothing like the vivid surges of knowledge and feeling that had haunted him before, but instead just vague impressions of something being wrong. Something that required his return to New York.

Of course, he hadn't expected that as soon as he stepped foot back in the city the barriers he'd imposed between himself and his powers would immediately begin to erode. Slipping on the stairs alone should have broken Peter's neck and yet here he was, the bruises already faded and the bump on the back of his head gone as if it had never existed.

Then there were the thoughts he'd unintentionally picked up from Mohinder, all of them little more than fragments. He hadn't realized Mohinder had never mentioned Eden's cooking skills aloud until he thought about it later and realized his mistake. What if Mohinder had noticed? What if he suspected?

Peter hated to think of what would happen if Mohinder caught him. Though, judging from the way he talked about her, it stood to reason that if this Eden girl had disappeared for the reasons Peter thought she had, Mohinder probably wasn't the one who had turned her in. But there was still something about the other man that left Peter unsettled. Most of those who hated people like Peter hated them out of ignorance or suggestibility. Mohinder didn't exactly seem ignorant. He probably wasn't all that susceptible to propaganda either. Still, Peter hadn't missed the fact that most of the textbooks on Mohinder's desk had been about genetics and evolution. It couldn't be a coincidence.

Sitting down, exhausted and queasy from the rush of returning powers, Peter told himself that there was no reason to worry yet. While Claude had taught him that extreme paranoia came with certain advantages, chasing away the first social contact he'd made in close to a year didn't seem like a good idea. Peter could hang back for a while, see what Mohinder was about and then decide if they could be friends. And as long as he followed Nathan's advice and lived peacefully and normally, he shouldn't have anything to be afraid of.

Mohinder couldn't recall the exact moment when he'd run out of ideas, but as he successively typed in the birthdays of everyone his father might have known or known of only to be told over and over again that access was denied, he thought it must have been a long time ago. How exactly his life had been reduced to an extended guessing game with his father's computer was also something of a mystery.

From what he could remember, Mohinder knew that it had never been his intention to stay in New York longer than it would take him to identify his father's body and clean out the apartment where he'd been staying. However, he had never anticipated the surge of emotion that had overcome him when it finally registered that his father hadn't just died of peaceful, natural causes but was instead brutally murdered at the hands of one of his own subjects.

Unlike others, Chandra Suresh had not been frightened by this new evolution. To him, it was not something to be contained or feared, but to be studied and understood. As a result of his curiosity, he had traveled to the United States where the anomaly had seemed most prevalent at the time and made a connection with a man calling himself Sylar. Sylar had allowed himself to be studied for the sake of science before something had turned him against Mohinder's father. Mohinder wasn't sure exactly what had happened. All he knew was that Chandra had been found dead in a taxi cab, barely recognizable as himself.

Before his father's death, Mohinder had been similarly intrigued by the genetic phenomenon manifesting itself in people all around the world. Bearing witness to the mysteries of nature had excited his inner scholar. But knowing that one of Them had killed his father, a man who wanted only to be their ally against encroaching prejudices, was enough to shut away any compassion Mohinder might have felt toward such people.

Sylar was apprehended shortly after Chandra's death but that did nothing to alleviate Mohinder's grief and anger. It was a state of mind that had made him more receptive than he might otherwise have been when a suited man had shown up one day on his doorstep, flashing government credentials and offering Mohinder the chance for a kind of revenge.

"We want to make sure that what happened to your father doesn't happen to any more innocent people," the nameless man had explained. "The research your father was conducting before he died might be useful in that endeavor. We need your help."

It wasn't that Mohinder approved of the virtual witch hunt the American government was acting out on its population or what such a witch hunt had turned its population into. But with the image of his father's mutilated body burned in his mind, he found himself signing his name, agreeing to do his part. He still thought there was nothing to be lost from taking a closer look at the possibility of controlling the phenomenon. Maybe even finding a cure. What he hadn't counted on was the way they'd required him to start basically from scratch, confiscating his father's work and leaving him with only dead ends. The biggest of which was contained on the portable hard drive Mohinder had stumbled upon accidentally when burying the pet lizard he had inadvertently neglected. Since then, he had been assigned the task of decoding the encrypted file by figuring out the password that protected the information it contained.

Mohinder was sure the government had experts more qualified for this job than himself. Certainly they had people who wouldn't take the better part of a year to come up with a simple password. But the task was never reassigned and so Mohinder floundered in a downward spiral of madness as he pored through memories and textbooks looking for any clue as to how to whittle down the endless possibility of twenty-six letters into one correct answer.

Having exhausted the list of birthdays he could think of and a few he'd made up, Mohinder's mind wandered. His hands hovered over the keys, all rubbed bare of their proper symbols by constant use. He could feel a kind of pulse in the nerves at the tips of his fingers but he resisted the urge to tap out the words connected to the thoughts that were really occupying his mind.

Three days had passed since Mohinder found Peter Petrelli in a heap at the bottom of the stairs and he was proving to be a far more reticent neighbor that Mohinder had anticipated from their less than auspicious first encounter. Under normal circumstances, Mohinder would have welcomed Peter's obvious reserve. But it seemed the more time he spent listening to the silence coming from Eden's old apartment, the more curious he became about its new occupant.

Mohinder's arrival in New York had coincided with the final weeks before the Congressional election and so he knew about Peter Petrelli. At least, he knew what he had heard. During the campaign, it seemed there were more stories of Peter's mishaps than there were about the platform on which Nathan Petrelli ran. Rumors circulated that Peter was a victim of emotional problems he'd had the misfortune of inheriting from his father. He'd thrown himself off buildings in suicide attempts. Had been held on suspicion of murder in Texas. Had spent a period of time in a hospital for undisclosed reasons only to disappear from his own bed weeks later. The list went on, each allegation more outrageous than the last, all of them portraying Peter as a man who was a danger to himself and others.

For all that his run for Congress was constantly being threatened by his brother's escapades, Nathan Petrelli had responded publicly only with the greatest compassion for his brother's obvious instability. His tenderness toward Peter and his determination to help him had endeared him to voters formerly put off his by his shark-like persona. His numbers in the polls only seemed to increase every time Peter did something that prompted a heartfelt statement from Nathan. As a result, the race was considered won long before the voters pushed the chosen candidate across the finish line.

Then Nathan Petrelli had been killed, his family taken with him. The initial overwhelming reaction among the public had been that Peter himself had done it, but then came the more popular theory that it had been one of Them and Peter was soon absolved in the eyes of the district his brother had almost gotten the chance to represent. He had then evanesced from the public eye and, apparently, from the city itself. One day he had been the center of vicious attention. The next he was simply gone.

Mohinder may have been aware of these stories at the time, but as a non-citizen without voting rights, it wasn't his responsibility to care. He'd been far too preoccupied with other things. Now the boy who had been the subject of such controversy in the past had stumbled upon his doorstep and for the first time Mohinder found himself giving real thought to what had been said about Peter Petrelli in the past. If Peter truly was the dangerous fratricidal maniac he'd been portrayed as, then he must have had a change in medication since leaving New York because Mohinder had yet to see any sign of instability in the other man.

More than that, he'd seen the grief in Peter's eyes when he'd looked upon his brother's image. Mohinder knew that grief. It wasn't the grief of a killer. It was the grief of one left behind.

Perhaps this was why Mohinder felt drawn to the other man, why he was strangely disappointed Peter had yet to follow through on the promise he had made to keep up at least part of the tradition Eden had started.

The fingers of one hand tracing his dry lips, Mohinder used a single finger of his free hand to press the letters to form the word that had been so occupying his thoughts in slow succession, spelling out the forbidden name: Peter.

Access denied.


	3. Chapter 3

**A New Day at Midnight**

**Part 3/19**

Another day passed without an appearance from Peter Petrelli and so Mohinder found himself playing the reluctant role of the mountain going to Mohammed.

He stood in the hallway outside Peter's door feeling nothing less than ridiculous as he listened to the hushed stillness coming from inside the apartment. On the one hand, he was in desperate need of some sort of distraction from the usual routine of password entry and access denial. On the other, it was entirely possible that Peter had reconsidered his offer and decided that what he really wanted was to be left alone, especially now that Mohinder had identified him as Nathan Petrelli's brother.

On top of that, Mohinder had no idea what he was going to say if Peter did happen to answer his knock. He was no longer accustomed to paying social visits for the simple pleasure of another's company and so hadn't been able to prepare anything resembling an excuse as to why he would be so eager for the attention of a virtual stranger.

Despite his lack of preparation, he was able to gather enough resolve to rap his knuckles lightly against the unyielding door. He rocked on his heels, waiting for a response.

There was the faint sound of shuffling as of bare feet scraping against a bare floor. Then nothing.

"Peter?" Mohinder called through the door, deciding that if he was going to make a nuisance of himself he may as well go all the way. "It's Mohinder Suresh."

More shuffling, this time closer to the door.

"Remember? I live down the hall," Mohinder added as if Peter might have managed to forget in the four days since they'd last seen each other. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, growing more self-conscious with every passing second, more certain that his original theory had been right. Perhaps Peter didn't want to see him and was even now trying to think of a polite way of putting him off.

But then the door opened little by little to reveal Peter standing on the other side. He peered out at Mohinder with distant recognition in his fever bright eyes and suddenly there was no longer any room for embarrassment.

"You're ill," Mohinder observed unnecessarily. Certainly nobody whose face was that shade of pale or whose brow so thickly filmed with sweat could be considered the picture of good health. Even worse was the way Peter used the doorframe to prop himself up as if the simple energy needed to hold himself upright was more than what he had in reserve at the moment.

"Yeah, it's just a bug or something," Peter replied, shrugging far too casually.

Mohinder raised an eyebrow. "How long have you been like this?" he asked.

"Day before yesterday," Peter replied, closing his eyes a moment.

"You look like hell," Mohinder said, hearing the motherly scold in his own voice with no small sense of private horror. "Have you seen a doctor?"

Peter blinked a few times, his response delayed. "I need to sit," he announced suddenly and shuffled away, leaving Mohinder with no choice but to follow him over to the couch where Peter all but collapsed onto the flattened cushions, on top of which a pillow and blanket had been set up as a makeshift bed.

Folding himself forward, Peter clasped his hands behind his neck. From this awkward position, he explained, "Coming back to the city after time away…always makes me a little sick. It's nothing."

"This has happened before, then," Mohinder guessed, seating himself next to Peter.

Peter nodded. "It'll go away," he insisted one more time.

Mohinder wasn't so sure. He eyed the phone on the table beside the couch and wondered if it wouldn't be prudent to call for some kind of help.

"Damn it, I'm fine," Peter snapped with abrupt vehemence, startling Mohinder. He used the tips of his fingers to rub at his forehead as if gripped by a sudden headache. Mohinder noticed a redness to his nose that suggested an impending bleed. He looked ready to pass out or vomit. "I'm just a little…"

"Feverish," Mohinder filled in when Peter trailed off. He didn't need a thermometer to confirm this suspicion. "And dizzy, from the looks of it. Have you been vomiting? I don't suppose this could have anything to do with that fall you took the other day." Mohinder didn't know much about head injuries, but he reached all the same for the spot on Peter's head that had so bothered him after his fall, thinking some trauma may have revealed itself in the time since the original incident. But his fingers met with nothing aside from the damp hair at the back of Peter's neck.

For his part, Peter tolerated the touch he'd been so quick to pull away from the first time Mohinder had tried it. He snorted. "I don't even have bruises from that," he said.

"Shame," Mohinder said, taking his hand away. "The only consolation for that level of embarrassment is the war wounds you get to show off afterward. Without those, it's all for nothing."

Peter's grimace changed for a moment into the crooked half smile Mohinder was becoming so familiar with and he knew his attempt at humor was being acknowledged, even appreciated.

"What can I do?" Mohinder asked, taking advantage of the opening. "You obviously don't want a doctor. Should I get a glass of water? Another blanket? Anything?"

Peter shook his head. "You shouldn't be here," he said.

"You can't be alone," Mohinder replied, annoyed that he should have to state something so obvious. He was not exactly well-rehearsed in the role of nursemaid but he wasn't about to risk leaving Peter by himself only to discover a dead body the next time he thought to knock on the other man's door.

But even with his head practically between his knees in an attempt to stave off the dizziness, the conflict on Peter's face was impossible to miss.

"I don't care if it's contagious and I'm not worried about any better things I might have to do, if that's what you're thinking," Mohinder said, preempting any protest Peter might be trying to formulate. "For God's sake, lie down before you fall over."

He pressed gently on Peter's shoulder, urging him to do as he said. Reluctantly, Peter obeyed, stretching out across the length of the shabby couch. It could not have been a comfortable position--the thing looked more like something that had been picked up off the curb on garbage day than a piece of functional furniture, but at least it was better than the floor.

With Peter quiet, Mohinder began to move around the apartment, searching for a cloth he could dampen in the hopes of soothing Peter's fever. He made it two steps before he tripped over several crumpled balls of what looked to be lined notebook paper. He'd been too preoccupied with Peter to notice before, but now he saw that the floor was covered with such debris, carpeted with it even. And it wasn't just the paper. Dozens of spent pens rolled across the floor in every direction, impossible to step around. Mohinder was effectively halted in his tracks.

It all looked to him like the aftermath to some kind of frenetic art project, the act of creation as impulsive as the obvious destruction that had followed. One scrap of paper caught his eye and he bent down to pick it up. On it, he saw a stick figure lying on what looked to be half of a roughly drawn bed, eyes closed and forehead wrinkled with worry. Another line, possibly the arm of a second stick figure, rested diagonally across the whole figure's waist. Idly intrigued, Mohinder wondered what had happened to the second stick figure. The other half of the bed.

At his side, Peter stirred as if sensing his privacy was being invaded. Guilty, Mohinder stuffed the fragment in his pocket and resumed his cloth-finding mission. He soon located one next to the sink in the cramped kitchen area. He ran the water, wetting the rag and folding it carefully before making his way back to Peter, who had curled in on himself, his legs pulled close to his chest.

"Let me know if this is too cold," Mohinder said, pressing the dampened fabric against Peter's warm forehead, an action that elicited a startled gasp from Peter. Once he'd adapted to the unfamiliar sensation, he settled into the soothing comfort and reached up, his hand covering Mohinder's. Carefully, Mohinder removed his hand so that Peter was holding the cloth in place on his own.

Peter sighed as Mohinder moved away. "Thanks, Nathan," he murmured before dropping off to sleep.

TBC


	4. Chapter 4

**A New Day at Midnight**

**Part 4/19**

Peter emerged from sleep no less exhausted than he had been when he'd first closed his eyes. Idly, he absorbed the fact that he was becoming more familiar with the ceiling of his new apartment, its virtual map of stains and cracks. Orienting himself back in reality was becoming easier every time and it reminded Peter that he had a home now. A kind of a home, anyway.

Stiffly, he pulled himself into a sitting position, allowing the wash cloth that had been resting on his forehead to fall into his lap. He picked it up, surprised to find that it was still relatively damp. He guessed that Mohinder must have been keeping vigilant watch, exchanging old cloths for new ones when needed in an effort to relieve Peter's fever.

Hearing a light snore coming from nearby, Peter looked around and saw that Mohinder was asleep in an armchair--head back, mouth slightly ajar, a book resting open on his chest. It could not have been a comfortable position and yet there was something about Mohinder that seemed at ease in it. Like maybe he was used to falling asleep without meaning to, upright and ready to resume some specially appointed task upon waking. Peter became painfully aware that, by being sick, he was pulling Mohinder away from whatever life he led so quietly behind the closed door of his apartment. Drawing him instead into this. Whatever this was.

But he knew what it was. The piles of crumpled paper at his feet would have been evidence enough, but there was also the way he kept picking up on Mohinder's stray thoughts. How quickly he'd healed after falling down the stairs. It had all been dormant for so long and now it was flooding back into him at a rate his body couldn't handle or control. Just like the first time except back then it had been new and exciting. Now Peter couldn't afford the kind of carelessness that had landed him in a coma a year ago. Especially if Nathan wasn't going to be there this time when he woke up.

Forcing away his melancholy thoughts, Peter stood, determined at least to conquer the distance between the couch and the bathroom on his own. He'd embarrassed himself enough in front of Mohinder during the short span of time they'd known each other. No way was he going to add something like asking Mohinder to hold it for him while he pissed to the list. As it was, when it came to keeping his balance, he found that there was really no such thing as going too slowly. With this in mind, he made it to his destination with little incident and was quick to close the door behind him.

Afterward, Peter leaned against the sink. With reluctance, he moved his eyes to the grimy mirror above it, expecting to see the same haggard, unshaven image of himself he'd become familiar with over the past couple of days while his body fought his powers like a virus. What he saw instead was an empty bathroom.

Shit.

Frustration and panic burning in his chest, Peter fought to take a deep breath, startled by the illusion of his own absence. It used to be that he didn't need the kind of exaggerated concentration Hiro used to time travel, but at the moment Peter was desperate and when he finally did begin to appear again, flickering at first like an image imperfectly projected on a movie screen, it was to find that he was mimicking his old friend's slightly constipated look while doing it.

It was only when he had a steady hold on visibility that Peter allowed himself to sit on the lowered toilet lid and indulge in the wild thoughts that were racing through his head. How long had been like that without knowing it? What if Mohinder had woken up and seen him? Or, rather, not seen him?

He didn't know how long he'd been sitting there, consumed by panic, when a light but urgent knock sounded from the other side of the bathroom door followed by Mohinder's concerned, groggy voice.

"Peter? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Peter responded automatically, his voice coming out too shrill to be entirely convincing.

"May I come in?" Mohinder asked.

Peter nodded miserably, but realized Mohinder couldn't see him. Or read his thoughts.

"Yeah," he said.

The door cracked open and Mohinder's head appeared. His eyes roamed the bathroom for a moment before coming to rest on Peter. Peter gazed back at him blearily, evenly, just glad that he was being seen.

"There you are," Mohinder said, stepping fully into the room. "I heard you get up. When you didn't come back, I thought perhaps you'd passed out in here." He sounded vaguely embarrassed by his own concern. Peter understood that Mohinder probably wasn't used to worrying about anybody but himself and was filled with guilt for having needed the other man's attention in the first place. "Your color's coming back a bit."

"Yeah, I'm getting there," Peter said, pushing himself into a standing position.

"Good thing," Mohinder said. "You had another two hours before I took you to the hospital." He tilted his head. "Do you feel like you could eat something?"

Peter's stomach immediately did a clumsy and unpleasant back flip. "Maybe later," he replied.

Mohinder raised an eyebrow but was satisfied enough with this answer that he moved from the door when Peter started making his way toward it and followed him back to the couch. The gray light of morning was beginning to seep through the cracks in the window shades. The last time this had happened, Peter had woken to find he'd lost two weeks. Losing a day and a night should have seemed small in comparison, but if the otherness Peter felt toward his powers as they returned to him so recklessly was any indication, he had really lost more than that and for a time that had lasted much longer.

When Mohinder chose to sit beside him on the couch rather than resuming his seat on the armchair he'd claimed earlier, their knees barely touching, Peter felt more than saw the worry Mohinder was trying to hide in an effort not to spook him. Peter did his best to muffle any direct thoughts he might have overheard, but he still sensed the way Mohinder's hand wanted to test his forehead for any lingering fever, how he searched for ways to figure out if Peter had thrown up in the bathroom without actually asking the question.

Not wanting to hear any of this, Peter cast about for a distraction of any kind and noticed the book that rested on the chair where Mohinder had been sitting. It was the same one that had been open on his chest when Peter had first woken up.

"Are you a Dr. Seuss fan or were you really just that bored?" he asked, nodding toward the well-worn copy of _The Sneetches_.

"I was just that bored," Mohinder confessed. "I hope you don't mind. I was trying to keep myself awake in case you needed me. Apparently all I succeeded in doing was putting myself to sleep."

Peter shook his head. "It's okay," he said, knowing Mohinder must have found the book in the stack of plastic crates he'd set up as bookshelves along the wall next to the bed, possibly when he went looking for the extra blankets Peter found he'd been covered with during the night. "I guess owning a kid's book isn't the most incriminating thing ever."

Turning invisible before your eyes--now that might be incriminating.

"I used to read that book all the time when I was little," Peter went on, reaching over and picking it up, flipping through its colorful pages. He cleared his throat. "My brother gave it to me. Back when I first went to school and I was having trouble making friends. I didn't fit in."

Mohinder tilted his head, at least as surprised by Peter's confession as Peter was himself.

"It was an apt gift, then," Mohinder observed, not quite patronizing. "Considering the overall message of the book. Learning to tolerate each other's differences." He pointed to a page where the two different kinds of Sneetches--ones with stars on their bellies and ones without--shook hands with one another, agreeing for the first time that variety was a good thing.

"Yeah, but it's not like Nathan told me that or anything," Peter said, rolling his eyes. "I mean, he didn't explain the book to me at all. He just gave it to me. He wanted me to figure it out for myself."

"Did you?" Mohinder asked.

Peter shrugged, realizing almost too late that he'd entered dangerous territory. Of course as a kid he'd gotten the book's overall sentiment. He knew that Nathan meant it was okay to be different from the other kids. But he hadn't really understood the book's meaning until he was much older and dreaming so vividly that he could fly that he'd thrown himself off a building to prove it was real. Ironically, this was around the same time he'd learned Nathan's own belief that the book's message could only be carried so far. That sometimes it wasn't okay to be different.

"It must be difficult," Mohinder said when Peter didn't answer, "for you to talk about your brother."

Peter shifted uncomfortably. From the look he had seen in Mohinder's eyes after he'd found the picture of Peter and Nathan in its broken frame, Peter could tell that Mohinder knew the story. The publicly accepted version, at least. But in the other man's tentative tone Peter sensed more than just morbid curiosity. Curious himself as to what Mohinder's motivations were for pursuing the subject but unwilling to pry into his private thoughts to find out, Peter chose his answer with care.

"I guess I wouldn't know," he said, setting the book aside, face down. "This is kind of the first time I've even tried." He decided to be honest. "I mean, yeah. It's hard."

Mohinder nodded solemnly. "My father died," he said abruptly. "That is, he was killed."

Peter felt something inside of him twist at Mohinder's revelation.

"You're probably wondering why I'm telling you this," Mohinder said. "To be truthful, I'm wondering myself. I suppose all I'm saying is that I know what it's like. To lose someone like that." He shook his head, eyes distant. "The man who murdered my father called himself Sylar. He was one of Them."

Peter stiffened, the very name tripping a visceral reaction in him that couldn't be described or stopped. He swallowed, closing his eyes against the memories of a high school hallway and a cheerleader's terrified, dying screams. That night, the one when he'd gone to rescue Claire shortly before inviting her to become a part of the resistance, was the first time Peter had experienced death, but without knowing he had the power to come back from it. Facing Sylar, it had fallen into place for him just why people without powers were so afraid of those with them. It was because evolution didn't distinguish between the good people and the bad. Survival of the fittest could just as easily favor serial killers as it could hospice nurses or junkie painters or single mothers. Because of this, every person with a power was equally suspicious. Maybe they weren't all monsters like Sylar, but they had the potential to be and that was what made them dangerous and intolerable.

In trying to provide a way for them to better relate to each other, Mohinder had unintentionally widened the distance between them. Peter admonished himself for having been stupid enough to forget that what he was, what he could do--hidden or not, forgotten or not--meant nobody was safe. Waking up invisible in front of Mohinder should have made it clear: the answer was distance rather than closeness. He could practically feel Claude hitting him upside the head and hear his voice.

"'_Bout bloody time."_

"I think you should go," Peter heard himself say, looking toward the door. Unable to look at Mohinder. "I mean, thanks for doing this, but…"

But what? There was no simple way of completing the statement. Peter let it hang.

Peter felt Mohinder's surprise and thought for a moment that there was going to be an argument or a demand for an explanation. But then surprise turned to resignation and the only response Mohinder gave was, "I understand."

Alone again, Peter felt unexpectedly bereft. He began to consider the special difficulties that came with establishing this rundown apartment as his own--cracked ceiling and all. Drifting from place to place, he'd never had to worry about things like these. He'd never had to worry if he was doing the right thing, pushing away the only person who'd made him feel cared about in such a long time.


	5. Chapter 5

**A New Day at Midnight**

**Part 5/19**

The more Mohinder stared at the drawings, the more he felt like a patient in a psychiatrist's office being asked to look at a series of inkblots and share what he thought he saw. One thing was for certain: delusional psychotic or not, Peter Petrelli wasn't exactly overflowing with artistic talent.

When Mohinder had first stumbled upon the scrap of paper showing the stick figure asleep in bed, he'd put it into his pocket without the conscious intention of looking at it again, much less stealing it. However, one of the many pitfalls of watching someone sleep was the boredom that came with it. The urgency of Peter's condition fading after a few hours, Mohinder had taken the liberty of finding other ways to pass the time until the other man woke.

Remembering the sketch, he'd pulled it out, flattening it atop the upturned cardboard box Peter used as a makeshift coffee table. Smoothing out its wrinkles, he became curious once again as to the whereabouts of the picture's second half and had begun a search. As it turned out, he not only found the other pieces to the first drawing, but several more drawings that were also more or less in tact. He worked until nearly dawn piecing them all together like small puzzles. Too tired by the end of it to attempt any kind of interpretation, Mohinder had then gone in search of a book to read. The next thing he remembered was hearing Peter in the bathroom.

Everything that came after that was overshadowed in Mohinder's memory by what he was coming to think of as his spectacular display of tactlessness, to which Peter had perhaps rightfully responded by asking him to leave. Mohinder hadn't meant any harm in sharing his father's story but he of all people should have known better than to tread on such a raw subject. He had pushed and Peter hadn't been ready. It was his own fault.

He'd arrived back in his own apartment to find the drawings still on him. He'd reasoned that Peter needed time before being approached again. That he would return the artwork when Peter had cooled off. For now, there was no harm in looking.

It went without saying that these were not sophisticated works of art. Peter drew mostly in cryptic symbols and stick figures that would have been comical if not for the deliberate and ominous way in which they'd been drawn. The tranquility of the fragment that had originally caught Mohinder's attention turned out to be the exception rather than the rule. These were not quiet meditations on tender moments.

The first of the five drawings Mohinder had been able to piece together was perhaps the most tame of the group. It was little more than a rough sketch of a stick figure standing in a wide open space, the line representing his arm extending into what looked like a paint brush. Other stick figures gathered around as if fascinated by the artist's work. Squares sitting on triangles in the background seemed to represent a gallery of finished pieces and yet it was the work in progress that held the others' attention so rapt. Something about it reminded Mohinder of the way characters in the movies looked when they were asked to gaze into a crystal ball.

The pieces of a second sketch, when put together, revealed an image of what looked to be a heavily populated cemetery, numerous headstones represented as small arches floating in never ending lines, occasionally punctuated by more elaborate statues. The plot in the foreground featured a headstone that simply read "Petrelli." Many of the other graves had flowers, but this one had a small, forlorn flag of undistinguished origin sagging before it. Otherwise, it looked to be neglected, covered in grass that was long but flattened, as if someone had trod upon it on their way to a different site. In the distance, two figures stood--one drawn more lightly than the other, a deliberateness to the technique Mohinder couldn't interpret. Was it meant to be an indication of race? Or was the lighter figure some kind of ghost?

As he lingered over each image in turn, Mohinder was aware of acute paranoia setting in. The kind that made him feel as though someone was looking over his shoulder. He almost thought he could hear the breathing of another person in the room, footsteps on the floor, a stirring in the air. Once, a book fell off a shelf for no apparent reason. A guilty conscience was apparently a very powerful thing indeed. And yet Mohinder couldn't put the drawings down. Couldn't put them away or admit to their creator what he had done.

If the second drawing seemed deeply personal, the third was more general. Arranged like a photo in a newspaper, all it showed was a crudely drawn vehicle--no more than a box with wheels, the name of a florist scrawled across its side--stopped at a strange angle in the middle of the street, represented by two parallel lines. A broken body lay on the road in front of the vehicle while a crowd began to gather around it, bystanders who couldn't help but gawk at the fresh tragedy. Frozen in shock and fear.

Even more violent than this, the fourth sketch showed a figure with a triangle around its waist (probably a skirt) laying atop a table, hovered over by a group of other figures all dressed in what looked like surgeon's caps and masks, holding up sharp-looking instruments. Dozens of wires attached the girl's body to a series of machines by her bed. Blood had gathered on the floor, exaggerated pools of it that filled the entire bottom half of the page. The girl's face featured no mouth with which to represent a scream, but the girl's chest was lifted as if she was crying out in terror and excruciating pain. She was being tortured. But why? And by whom?

And then there was the drawing that had so captured Mohinder's attention in the first place. It stood in stark contrast to the other four in the relative serenity of its characters. As Mohinder had suspected, the diagonal line across the first figure's waist was indeed the arm of a second figure. They lay in bed together as they would be seen from above--the first on its back, the second on its side. Their eyes were drawn as slanted lines; they both looked deeply asleep. Small lines of worry wrinkled both their foreheads, but the embrace was comforting. Affectionate. All the more fascinating considering the fact that both figures appeared to be male.

As a rule, Mohinder did not make a habit of involving himself in the love lives of others. He was barely involved in his own love life, such as it was (or wasn't). That Peter was an attractive man was never a question in Mohinder's mind. But up until now, he'd appreciated Peter's aesthetic appeal only as someone might admire a beautiful piece of art work they didn't quite understand. Distancing himself in this way meant that the problem of Peter's sexual orientation was never a consideration. Seeing this picture made it all much more immediate, much more personal as Mohinder couldn't stop himself from wondering in idle moments what it would be like to be that second figure, wrapped around Peter's body, asleep and content but for the worry brought on by dreams.

The phone rang with a suddenness that startled Mohinder out of his reverie and nearly out of his chair. Recovering himself, he considered ignoring the call in favor of continuing his contemplation of Peter's drawings, on figuring out the story he was sure was in them somewhere. But the habit of answering was firmly ingrained and so he reached for the receiver just as the thing was about to bleat for the third time.

"This is Suresh," he said.

"Where have you been?" the familiar, slightly distorted voice replied, the tone a firm tug on an imaginary leash.

The government. The calls came at irregular intervals, always when Mohinder had forgotten to expect them. He was never given a name for the person on the other end. Never even certain that it was the same person every time.

"I was helping a sick neighbor," Mohinder replied curtly. "I would have called if something had changed." He'd written the number they'd given him on a piece of masking tape and stuck it to the side of the phone's cradle.

"It doesn't matter," the voice responded, equally curt. "You know the procedure. You are there when we call."

"I'll just let my neighbor drown in a pool of his own vomit next time, then," Mohinder said, bristling.

"Do that," the voice said, not exactly joking. "Or maybe while you're holding back his hair you can ask him for ideas on passwords since you appear to be incapable of coming up with one on your own."

Mohinder sighed. This was becoming a familiar argument. "I've told you a thousand times. I'm a geneticist, not a technological expert or a psychic," he said. "I'm sure there are any number of people in your employ who could figure out this password in a matter of minutes. Or find a way around it. All I can do is make educated guesses based on what I knew of my father, which really amounts to very little."

"Our people have more important things to work on," the voice said. "Unless you're no longer interested in helping us find a way to properly deal with monsters like Sylar…"

"Of course I'm still interested," Mohinder said. "I just feel that there are better uses of my skills and knowledge. If you would just let me see my father's notes, other parts of his research I could help you come up with a cure or some other way of suppressing special abilities in those who would use them to do violence--"

"Your father's notes are classified information," the voice informed him.

"But the file he encrypted apparently isn't," Mohinder retorted.

"It could be nothing."

"It could be everything," Mohinder countered. "And I would be the first to see it."

A pause.

"Don't give us a reason to believe we can't trust you, Mr. Suresh."

Mohinder swallowed, sensing the underlying threat. A far cry from the compassion and reassurance with which they'd originally approached him. The man who'd killed his father was locked up, they'd said. But others like him were still running free. As the only son of one of their victims, it was Mohinder's responsibility to contribute to the global effort to stop the violence. Back then, they would have had him believe that the encrypted file was the key to it all. Now this.

"Do you understand, Mr. Suresh?"

Mohinder inhaled deeply. "I understand," he said.

"Good."

And then, as always, a dial tone.


	6. Chapter 6

**A New Day at Midnight**

**Part 6/19**

The next time Mohinder saw Peter Petrelli it was when he went to perform the ever fruitless task for checking his mail. On occasion, his mother had been known to send him letters from home but on this particular occasion, there was no correspondence whatsoever waiting for him in the lonely slot. Locking it back up, he went to turn back toward the stairs when he caught sight of Peter lingering just inside the entrance to the building, watching people pass on the sidewalk outside.

He was debating with himself on whether or not to approach when Peter looked up and saw him first. Feeling awkward, Mohinder asked, "Are you waiting for someone?"

Peter shrugged, his hands slipping into his pockets. "Pizza," was all he said.

"Ah," Mohinder replied. He tilted his head. "You're looking much better. That is, you look well."

"Thanks," Peter said. "I feel a lot better."

Somehow feeling that they had reached the end of the exchange, Mohinder gave a polite smile and turned to go. Just as his foot touched the first stair, Peter spoke again, "Look, I'm sorry about before. About throwing you out like that. It wasn't right."

Mohinder stopped and turned back to Peter. "No need to apologize," he said. "You were ill and I shouldn't have pried…"

Peter shook his head, cutting Mohinder off. "I'm the one who brought it up, right?" he said. "Anyway, I didn't mean to be a jerk. So…sorry." From underneath the hair that fell in Peter's face, Mohinder thought he read genuine repentance in his eyes. "And thanks again for staying with me while I was sick."

Mohinder took his foot off the stair but his hand remained on the rail. "Well, I must admit that when we made our agreement to check up on each other now and then I didn't expect you to take the part about making sure you were still alive quite so literally," Mohinder said.

A smile bloomed on Peter's face at this, but he didn't laugh. He crossed his arms loosely over his chest and gave Mohinder a narrow-eyed look of mock evaluation. Mohinder sensed that he was about to be tested.

"Do you like mushrooms?" Peter asked.

"I'm assuming you're referring to pizza toppings and not illegal drug use," Mohinder replied. Peter rolled his eyes. "They're not my favorite but I'll eat them."

"Good," Peter said. "Because I could kind of use someone to share my pizza with." He wriggled his eyebrows enticingly. "If you're not busy, of course."

Mohinder's thoughts immediately went to the stolen drawings still spread over the surface of his desk. If he was busy, those were the only thing he was busy with and he had a suspicion that Peter's peace offering would be immediately revoked upon the discovery of the pilfered art work. He might even take the drawings away. Or worse, destroy them as he'd destroyed the others.

Seeming to pick up on Mohinder's hesitation, Peter said, "You don't have to--"

"No," Mohinder said. "No, I want to. As long as there's enough to be shared."

Peter smiled again, gently this time. "There will be," he said.

"All right," Mohinder said. "Then I'll see you upstairs in a few minutes."

"Sure," Peter said.

Leaving Peter behind to wait for the pizza, Mohinder stormed into own apartment intent on hiding from sight anything remotely incriminating.

The drawings were the first thing to go, swept to the bottom of an already full drawer in his father's desk. The encrypted file was next, the computer turned off entirely. Then went the lists of tried and failed passwords, hidden in the drawer below the one with the drawings in it. Textbooks were tucked away from view, stuffed with the notes he'd written out.

The remaining time was spent putting away the piles of dirty laundry he'd allowed to accumulate on the floor. Nothing could be done about the stacks of dirty dishes by his sink, but at least he managed to wash two of them off and set them on the coffee table in his living room before Peter's knock came at the door.

"Pizza's here."

Mohinder opened the door to find Peter standing there as promised, balancing an aromatic pizza box in one hand, eyebrow arched in amusement as he took in Mohinder's uncharacteristically flustered state.

"You didn't have to run up here and clean for me, you know," he said. "I've seen your place before."

"True, but back then I was hoping you'd be put off by my squalor," Mohinder replied.

"You've seen my place, right?" Peter said. "I'm not put off very easily when it comes to squalor."

Mohinder laughed and reached out for the pizza box Peter was still holding. "Let me help you with that," he said. "It must be hot." He walked it over to the coffee table where the plates waited for them.

"Wow, real plates," Peter said, picking up one of the plain white discs and examining it with exaggeratedly avid interest. "I haven't used one of these since before I left New York. Not in someone's home anyway."

"A little unnecessary for pizza, perhaps, but I'm glad I can treat you to some small luxury nonetheless," Mohinder said. "Speaking of which, do I owe you any money for the food?"

Peter snorted in a way that suggested he'd never heard anything more ridiculous in his life. Without further legitimating the question, he seated himself on the floor, completely ignoring the couch and began to serve both himself and Mohinder. Meanwhile, Mohinder got out bottles of beer for them both. Peter accepted his gratefully, mouth already full. He at least had the decency to swallow before attempting to speak, wiping sauce from the corner of his mouth.

"What's the aquarium for?" he asked, nodding toward the empty tank that sat in the corner.

"My father had a pet lizard when he lived here," Mohinder said.

"What happened to it?" Peter wanted to know.

Mohinder winced. "I may have inadvertently let it starve."

Peter nearly choked at this. "Wow," he said, recovering. "That's…really bad."

Mohinder felt his face heat. "It was," he admitted. "Eden tried to show me how to take care of it, but I just kept forgetting and then one day I looked in the tank and it was dead. I felt terrible." He shrugged. "Then again, it was always strange taking care of a pet my father named after me."

"He called it Mohinder?"

Mohinder nodded. "At any rate, it was probably less of a disappointment to him than I was." He smiled grimly. "But I'm probably getting too personal again, sharing that with you." He glanced sidelong at Peter, checking for his reaction, not wanting to scare him off again.

Peter lifted his shoulders. "It's not like I don't know anything about being a disappointment to someone," he said. "Nathan just never named a pet after me to try and make up for it. If that's what your father was doing." He glanced at Mohinder. "Maybe he just needed somebody to talk to and your name was the first one that came to mind."

"Because he couldn't talk to the real me," Mohinder said, rejecting Peter's more positive spin but grateful for his attempt at diplomacy. "I refused to listen. I thought he was insane for coming here in the first place. But he was so determined that he could make a difference. I couldn't talk him out of it."

"Make a difference with what?" Peter asked, finishing his beer and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

Mohinder hesitated. "He was a geneticist," he hedged. "He was very interested in what was going on here at the time with the sudden evolution of special abilities in humans. It was happening in India too but it was more concentrated here. This city especially. So he came to study it."

"But why?" Peter asked. "Did he think he could find a way to fix it?"

"In his eyes, there was nothing to fix," Mohinder said. "He just wanted to try and figure out why it was happening. To whom it was happening. If there was a pattern that could be recognized. That sort of thing."

"Hmm," Peter said, pushing his empty plate away. "Did he find anything?" He sat back, leaning against the couch.

Mohinder frowned. "I don't know," he said. "His papers were taken away before I had the chance to look at them. Most of what I'm doing now is retracing his steps, trying to figure out what he already knew. It's frustrating work."

"Seems like it would be," Peter said. "So, what about you? Do you think you could come up with a cure, a way to stop it?"

Mohinder found that he was unable to read Peter's tone. Did he sound hopeful or disdainful? Was he thinking of his brother's killer or something else?

"Theoretically, a cure should be possible," he said. "Whether it's ethical is another question. Frankly, if it helps make people like Sylar less dangerous, then it seems a worthwhile endeavor to me. And I imagine there are those with powers who wish not to have them. It wouldn't hurt to give them options, if they wanted them."

Mohinder wasn't sure what kind of response he expected from Peter after laying out his politics so boldly. It was common after this kind of statement to receive either an impassioned argument to the contrary or eager agreement. Peter gave him neither. Instead, he became suddenly quiet, absently twisting his empty beer bottle in his hands, shredding the label as he went. Mohinder waited.

"So what about people who don't have powers?" Peter asked at last, gazing at the colored glass of the bottle rather than looking at Mohinder as he posed the question. "Do you think they should have options? If there was a way?"

"Do you mean if there was a way to give powers to those who weren't born with them?" Mohinder asked, the request for clarification buying him time to form his answer.

Peter nodded.

"It would depend on what they wanted to use them for, I suppose," Mohinder said.

Peter smirked, a bitter twist of his lips. "Like an application process," he said.

"Precisely," Mohinder replied. "A rigorous one to be sure. But even then there would be significant problems, no doubt. Who gets in and who's kept out. Who makes the decision. How the decision is made. I imagine it would get very messy. And dangerous."

"I think so too," Peter said.

It wasn't until Peter looked up, his nose nearly colliding with Mohinder's that Mohinder realized just how close together they were sitting. Sometime in the process of eating their dinner, they had closed the distance between them so that their arms brushed, their knees rested together. There was nothing awkward in the proximity, the feel of Peter's breath on his face. That Mohinder should lean in and press his closed lips to Peter's seemed a natural next step to what was already taking place.

They sat like that for a moment, frozen in surprise. Peter's lips were soft but remained unyielding. The only concession he made to the unexpected gesture was when his eyes, which had widened as Mohinder moved in, slid closed. Mohinder took this as a positive sign and closed his own eyes, pushing Peter's hair back and relaxing into the kiss. He cupped Peter's cheek, tilted his head and did what he could to deepen the kiss while their mouths were still closed. For a moment, Peter's lips parted and it seemed that progress was being made. Then Mohinder felt Peter's hands against his chest, gently but insistently pushing him away. With great reluctance, Mohinder complied with Peter's silent request and pulled back.

"I'm sorry," he was already saying.

"No, it's just…" Peter hesitated. "I can't," he said, his voice filled with a regret that made the rejection all the more painful for Mohinder, who already had a thousand needles dancing in his chest. "I can't," Peter repeated and was off the floor and out of the apartment before Mohinder had time to do anything except watch him go.

TBC


	7. Chapter 7

**A New Day at Midnight**

**Part 7/19**

It occurred to Peter as he shut himself inside his darkened apartment that this scared virgin thing he kept pulling on Mohinder was getting kind of embarrassing. 

It wasn't normal for Peter not to notice when someone was attracted to him. He'd always been mildly and somewhat willfully oblivious, but the ability to read people's minds and pick up on what they were feeling meant he usually had a pretty good idea how someone felt about him, one way or the other. But somehow he'd missed it with Mohinder. Missed the fact that he was practically sitting in the other man's lap until they had attached themselves at the lips, beer-smelling breath and all. 

Peter leaned against the closed door, willing his heart to stop slamming against the inside of his chest. It was his own damn fault. Inviting Mohinder to eat with him, teasing him about cleaning his apartment. Part of him must have known and that part of him must have wanted it to happen. Was exhilarated by the feel of Mohinder's mouth on his own, the sensation of contact new again after so long without. 

So of course common sense had waited until a second too late to kick in. Or maybe it had kicked in a second too early. Either way, he was an idiot. Initiating a friendship with someone like Mohinder was risk enough. Having sex with him was out of the question. It had to be. 

Peter was startled out of his self-flagellation when the armchair in his living room jumped a few inches across the floor seemingly of its own volition. All at once, Peter's thoughts silenced and the apartment became hushed in a way only possible when someone inside it was holding their breath. And Peter wasn't holding his. 

…_damn chair…_

Peter only caught a fragment of the thought but the voice he heard was one he would recognize anywhere. 

"Claude?" he said, calling into the apartment's apparent emptiness, eyes searching for a stirring of air that might tell him where the invisible man was standing. 

_Fuckin' hell._

"I can hear you," Peter pointed out. He reached over and turned on a lamp as if that might help. After a moment, Claude showed himself, holding his hands up like a criminal caught in the act. He still stood next to the chair he'd accidentally disturbed. 

For a moment, they just looked at each other. In the nine months that had passed since he'd last seen Claude, Peter didn't think much had changed. In the Englishman he still saw the grizzled vagrant he'd first dreamt of a year before. His former mentor's beard was maybe a little grayer than it had been previously, the lines around his eyes a little deeper. Other than that, there was little difference. At least, nothing that Peter could see. 

"How did you find me?" Peter asked, breaking the silence. 

"I think the better question, mate, is how long you've been in bloody New York without popping by to see your old friends," Claude shot back, lowering his hands. "Fine shit hole you have here, by the way. As if your last flat wasn't bad enough." He made a show of looking around at the secondhand furniture, the cardboard boxes Peter used for tables. 

"Because living on a roof with a bunch of pigeons is so much better," Peter retorted, falling back into their old verbal sparring without quite realizing it. "Seriously, how did you find me?"

"Psychic painter, remember?" Claude said, wandering the apartment now, picking up random objects and tossing them away without really looking at them. "It took a bit of doing, but I find if you threaten him with enough bodily harm, he eventually does what you say. No spine, that one." 

Peter raised an eyebrow. "You had Isaac look for me?" he said. 

"Yes," Claude said, affecting indignation. "That is, I tried to keep my promise and leave you alone like you asked, but my undying love proved to be too much and I just had to be with you. I hope you'll be able to find it in your heart to forgive me. True love and all that." He batted his eyelashes in what might have been a bizarre imitation of Scarlett O'Hara only to snap back into his usual dry, slightly condescending expression as he waited for Peter to react to the provocation. 

Peter sighed. "What are you doing here?" he asked. 

"Your history of prophetic dreams leads me to believe I really shouldn't have to answer that question," Claude said. "But if you insist on being your usual daft self, I suppose I can waste a little more time and spell it out for you: Claire." 

"Claire?" Peter said, the name straining from his tongue, hollow-sounding. 

"Yeah, you know. Claire," Claude said. "Otherwise known as your precious niece. Otherwise known as your brother's illegitimate daughter. Otherwise known as the only living relative you have who might still want to talk to you…" 

"You should know this isn't the best way to get me to listen to you," Peter said, though they both knew by now that Claude had his attention no matter what. 

Claude's shoulders seemed to sag like a doctor's when giving a patient's family bad news. His eyes shifted from Peter's and he bowed his head slightly. "It's like this," he said. "They took her. A coupla weeks now." 

"What?" Peter said. "Who took her?"

"Who d'ya think?" Claude snapped. "The same people who killed your brother, I imagine. Or some of their colleagues. There's so many of them it's a bit hard to tell. Besides, it's not like any of us saw it happen. She just went out for a while one day and didn't come back." 

"But I thought…I thought we had people on the inside who wouldn't let that happen," Peter said. "Especially not to her." 

"We do," Claude said. "But having a mole only gets us so far, you know. There are certain things that can't be prevented or planned for. Bennet's doing what he can but they're keeping him as far from her as possible." 

Claude spoke of his former colleague with the same pained, awkward tone as always. He had never quite trusted the other man after the spectacular betrayal that had ended their partnership years earlier. The fact was, Claude didn't trust anybody. But at times it seemed to Peter as though he wanted to trust Bennet, the government agent who'd raised Nathan's daughter as his own for so many years. 

Claude took a deep breath when it became clear that none of this was eliciting a discernible response from Peter. "Look, I wouldn't be here but we've sort of run out of options and the more considerate among us agreed that, as Claire's biological family, you at least had the right to know what's going on," he recited as if this was some pre-planned speech someone had pinned to the inside of his jacket for him. "And since you seem to be in New York anyway--and once again thank you so much for not bothering to tell anyone you're here--"

"I didn't want to tell anyone," Peter said. 

Claude hung his head as if he had been expecting this response and was none too pleased that they had come to the point where he actually had to deal with it. "Don't sodding tell me you're still on about this guilt thing over Nathan," he said. 

Peter narrowed his eyes. "Yeah, I'm still 'on about this guilt thing,'" he said. "Being responsible for your own brother's death isn't exactly something you get over. Ever."

"Even if it means letting his daughter die as well?" Claude said. "Because they may not have done it yet, Pete, but we all know how this story ends. We know the ones they take in don't usually make it out alive. That's just the way it goes." 

"You don't need me to help Claire," Peter insisted. 

"Maybe not, but I was sort of hoping you could find it in your heart to clear a place in your crowded schedule for us," Claude retorted. "I mean, I know you're busy screwing your new boyfriend and all--"

The air rushed from Peter's lungs. 

"You don't know anything about that," he said, hearing the warning tone in his own voice. 

Claude looked pleased. "Hit a nerve, have I?" he said derisively. "I haven't seen that look on your face since that time I implied you had inappropriate fantasies about your own brother. I'm still not entirely convinced that you didn't, but at least this time I have proof to back me up." 

Peter's hands balled into tight, impotent fists. "What proof?" he said. 

Claude rolled his eyes. "Once again, I refer to exhibit A," he said. "Psychic painter." He cocked his head to the side. "Now that's an interesting shade of pale." He gestured to Peter's face. "You should know that Isaac was less than thrilled when he saw that he'd painted a picture of you in a compromising position with another man. Again." 

Peter felt his brow furrow. "Mohinder and I haven't slept together," he said. 

Now Claude looked genuinely confused. "Haven't you?" he said. 

Peter shook his head. 

"Well, then I guess I've gone and ruined the ending," Claude said, shaking his head at himself. "Silly me. When will I learn that some people just don't like to be spoiled when it comes to these things?" He sighed as if frustrated with his own lack of discretion. "But can you blame me for thinking it? After all, you drew a picture of it yourself not so long ago. I saw it with my own eyes." 

"What?" Peter said. 

"You should tell your boyfriend to stop stealing from you," Claude said pointedly. 

"Mohinder didn't steal anything from me," Peter said. 

"Well, then we might as well hand Isaac his pink slip now because we must have found ourselves another artist who can draw the future," Claude said. "See, there are these drawings your boy keeps in his flat. He looks at them all the time. Obsessed. His favorite is this one of two men sleeping in bed together. Not that I can fault him for choosing that one seeing as how it's the least depressing of the lot." Claude lifted his shoulders, a little more serious. "I assumed you drew them." 

Peter thought of those hours he had lost when he'd first been overwhelmed by the return of his powers. He'd woken to find his wrists sore and a pile of sketches on the table in front of him, each drawn urgently and in quick succession. He'd torn up each one without looking at them, not wanting to know anything about the future he'd forecast for himself, for his friends, for the world. He'd left them where they fell on the floor and then Mohinder had shown up…

"He must have taken them while I was asleep," he murmured, dismayed. Angry now, he turned on Claude. "What the hell were you doing spying on him anyway? Stay away from him." 

Soberly, Claude said, "You might consider staying away from him yourself. The government's keeping an eye on that one. He's got a file they want cracked and it seems to me he'll be more than happy to hand the thing over when the time comes. I'm guessing he wouldn't have any qualms about handing you over either if he found out about you. Especially now that you've tricked him into having feelings for you." 

"I didn't trick him," Peter said. "It just happened." 

"He won't see it like that," Claude promised. 

"He won't find out," Peter said. "I'm not interested in my powers anymore. I'm not interested in saving the world. I just want to live my life. If I do that, they won't have a reason to come after me. They won't hurt anyone else." 

Claude rolled his eyes. "What kind of an idiot are you?" he said. "Might I remind you they're already coming after you? They're already hurting Claire? Is anything I'm saying penetrating that thick skull of yours? Anything at all?"

Peter sat on the arm of the chair, cradling his head in his hands. "Stay away from me," he said. "Please." 

There was a rustle as Claude moved, stepping toward him. In a low tone, he said, "I remember when I could hardly get you to shut up about how wrong your brother was for faking his ordinary life, lying to his wife and his children twenty-four hours a day. How one day you'd make him see that he shouldn't have to pretend to be someone he wasn't just so he wouldn't have to fear for his life on a daily basis." 

Peter felt the tears sting his eyes but refused to let them fall. Not in front of Claude. He said nothing. 

"I just wonder how you're going to explain it to him--this Mohinder--when one day you cut yourself while you're making dinner and he goes to kiss it better only to find it's already gone. Or when he starts to find it annoying rather than endearing that you always seem to know what he's thinking before he can say it. Or when you accidentally throw him across the room after an argument you're having gets a little too heated and you lose control. I remember that one pretty well myself." Claude rolled his shoulders as if from the memory of it. "The man is smart, I'll give him that. You can't hide forever. And, like I said, he won't take kindly to it when he figures out you've been lying to him since the moment he met you." Claude put a hand on Peter's shoulder. "So your best bet is to stay away from him, I think. If you're not going to come back to us, at least stay away from him."

Peter laughed bitterly, reaching for the pettiest straw he could find. The only one left to him. "What, are you jealous or something?"

Something flashed in Claude's eyes. "Hardly," he said. "I always knew you'd come back to New York eventually but I was never delusional enough to think you'd be coming back to me as well. That's over." 

Peter nodded, though he felt in the buzz of Claude's thoughts the lie in his words. 

"Besides," Claude went on, "all the fun would be gone from it without your brother around to get all disapproving every time he saw the two of us together, knowing I was fucking his baby brother." Claude grinned impishly. "Nathan had his uses, I'll give them that." 

Grimly, Peter said, "I can't help you. Please just go." 

"Fine," Claude said. "But just remember it was once said that you regret the things you don't do more than you regret the things you do." His brow wrinkled. "Fuck if I can remember who it was said it, but whoever they were, they had a point." He took his hand from Peter's shoulder. "You know where to find us." 

And with that, Claude disappeared. Peter watched numbly as the door to his apartment opened seemingly of its own accord only to slam closed again, rattling the frame and Peter with it. 

Peter sat by himself in the silence, Claude's words reverberating in his mind. He thought of Claire, of what must be happening to her. The dreams that had brought him back to New York made more sense now, if what Claude said was true. In them, he'd begun to feel the scrape of knives and scalpels on his own skin, to hear the beeping of monitors keeping track of his reaction. He guessed that they were purposely inflicting wounds and measuring the amount of time it took for them to fully heal. The thought nauseated him. But how could he go back? What did they expect him to do if he did go back? 

Then there was the problem of Mohinder. That he'd stolen the sketches was alarming but there was comfort in the fact that there was no way for him to know what they really meant. But if that was true, then what was it that so fascinated him about Peter's work? What did he think he was seeing in those drawings, if not the future? 

As for Mohinder's connection to the government, the story seemed easy enough to piece together. He figured they'd taken advantage of Mohinder's grief over his father's death, maybe even his desire for revenge and used it in order to take from him all that knowledge he was now trying so hard to retrace. If this was true, it wasn't like Mohinder was a full-fledged agent out to exterminate Peter and the people like him. But did that really make him any less dangerous? Any less of a participant in the virtual genocide that was taking place at the hands of the people Mohinder worked for? 

Peter didn't know the answer to any of these questions. What he did know was that the smart thing for him to do would be to abandon Mohinder altogether and go help the others rescue Claire. Join the resistance again even if it meant betraying Nathan's memory and forgetting that he ever knew Mohinder. Before it was too late. 

But it was already too late. It had been too late the moment Mohinder pressed his lips to Peter's. Maybe even before that. Maybe even back to when Peter had fallen down the stairs in the first place. It had been so long since something good had happened to him and now here it was at the most inconvenient time possible with the most inconvenient person imaginable. But between what Claude had said about Isaac's painting and his own drawing, it was easy to convince himself that Mohinder fit into all of this somewhere. That even if the consequences were devastating, it was all supposed to happen like this. Somehow. 

Not quite sure what he was doing, Peter waited a long moment outside Mohinder's door, listening for some kind of answer to his insistent knock. Eventually, Mohinder appeared, opening the door only wide enough to greet Peter without wordlessly inviting him inside. 

"Peter," he said mildly, ambiguously. 

Peter thought about explaining himself. He thought about making excuses about why he'd run away earlier. He also thought about demanding to know what Mohinder had done with his drawings. And he thought about telling Mohinder everything. Right then and there. 

What he did was move forward into Mohinder's space and crush his lips against the other man's together in a searing kiss. Mohinder made a muffled sound of surprise before settling in to the feel of Peter's lips against his, his hands going first to Peter's waist before skimming up his sides. 

They pressed themselves close together. Peter gasped, his hands finding the button on Mohinder's pants, fumbling long enough that Mohinder was given an opportunity to break away, chest heaving. His hands covered Peter's and gently pulled them off. Peter groaned and pressed his forehead against Mohinder's shoulder.

Mohinder pressed a gentle kiss just above Peter's right ear and rubbed patient circles on the expanse of his back as they stood together. Peter felt Mohinder's confusion but also felt a tentative kind of pleasure. He sensed the way Mohinder marveled at Peter's sudden change of heart, his need to know its origin but his unwillingness to ask. 

"I just need to know," Mohinder said, whispering in his ear, "are you sure?"

Peter nodded mutely, turning his head so that his cheek rested against Mohinder's shoulder. 

"Good," Mohinder said and Peter felt the rush of his relief, the way it drowned out a single stubborn thread of skepticism. He brushed the hair out of Peter's eyes, forcing him to look up. "But go slow. We've got time." 


	8. Chapter 8

**A New Day at Midnight**

**Part 8/19**

Days after Peter's sudden reappearance on his doorstep, Mohinder found himself marveling at what an eccentric sleeper his new lover had proved to be. Artlessly sprawled on his belly, one arm dangled over the side of the mattress while the other was used as a kind of makeshift pillow. Sheets were arranged with unnecessary modesty around Peter's nude form. Strictly speaking, he was taking up far more than his fair share of space on what had quickly become his side of Mohinder's bed, but Mohinder was happy to let him to do it if it meant he got to enjoy the rare sight of Peter so completely at ease. 

Mohinder didn't know what it was that had inspired Peter to come back that first night, what had made him pursue with such frantic need something that he'd run from only moments before. In his heart, he was loathe to analyze Peter's return but in his head he couldn't let go of the fact that something must have happened. Adding to his suspicion was a constant vigilance he had begun to sense in Peter during his waking hours, a kind of tension that made him seem like someone expecting a second clap of thunder after a first had rumbled nearer than expected, never knowing from which direction it would come. 

Whatever had caused it, Peter's peace was fragile and Mohinder had trouble finding his own peace because of it. He found himself enamored of Peter to an almost embarrassing degree, one that left him in a state of constant aching suspense because as solid and certain as it all felt when he was inside Peter, the fact remained that he never knew from one night to the next whether Peter would still be with him when he woke up the next morning. It all seemed so delicate. So ephemeral. 

Lost in thought, Mohinder didn't notice Peter stirring until he began to murmur in his sleep. He did this on occasion, seeming to carry on entire conversations with the ghosts of his dreams, never remembering what it was he'd said the next day. But this time, something was different. This time, Peter's tone was not conversational but pleading. He grew more agitated until he began to physically struggle, limbs flailing as he fought invisible foes. Mohinder reached out to stop him only to find himself thrown back as Peter sat bolt upright, his eyes flying open in a wild return to consciousness. He gasped, looking around the room as if he didn't quite know where he was. 

"Peter?" Mohinder said cautiously, still recovering from the shock of having been knocked away so forcefully. 

But Peter was too preoccupied with what appeared to be some kind of thorough self-examination to respond. He ran his hands up and down his arms, over his chest and face, lifted the sheets to glimpse his legs, apparently searching for injury. Finding none, he closed his eyes and let out a trembling breath. 

"What was that?" Mohinder ventured again after a moment. 

Peter ran a hand through his hair, mussing it further. "Nightmare," he mumbled cryptically. He rubbed at his face a moment before focusing on Mohinder, smiling grimly. "Good morning," he said in an abrupt change of subject, leaning in to kiss Mohinder lightly as if nothing had happened. 

Mohinder considered pushing Peter, but knew where that had gotten him before. He accepted the kiss with a glance at the clock by the bed, allowing Peter to avoid the obvious issue for the time being. "Closer to afternoon by now," he noted. 

"Hmm," Peter said in acknowledgement. "Do you have eggs by any chance?" He swung his legs over the side of the bed, his back to Mohinder as he reached for a pair of pants that had been discarded on the floor the night before. 

"Are you making breakfast?" Mohinder asked, quietly amused. 

"That or offering to go grocery shopping," Peter replied, giving Mohinder an impish grin over his shoulder. "Which is it?"

Mohinder thought for a moment. "I should have some," he said. "No telling how old they are, though. I don't eat them very often." 

"I see," Peter said, teasingly. "So, scrambled? Over easy? Sunny side up? Hard boiled?"

"Scrambled, I suppose," Mohinder said. 

Peter's face lit up. "I knew there was a reason I liked you," he said, stealing another quick kiss before rising from the bed. Shirtless, he moved to the kitchen where he poked around Mohinder's cabinets looking for the proper supplies. Rather than helping him, Mohinder watched appreciatively from where he'd moved to the desk, turning on the computer and listening to it buzz and click as it warmed up for another round of the famous guessing game. 

He hadn't chanced working on his password project since Peter had more or less taken up residence in his apartment, but he knew neglecting his work was a risk he could afford to take only for so long. With Peter around, he didn't want to be receiving another angry phone call from his superiors. 

As he watched the screen go through its familiar parade of codes and menus, he decided to take advantage of the idle moment. "These nightmares," he said, "do they happen often?"

Peter cracked a series of eggs into a bowl before answering. 

"Sometimes," he said. "They've happened before." 

"So are your nightmares another consequence of your return to the city like your getting sick or are they caused by something else?"

Peter made a point of not looking at him as he began stirring his egg and milk mixture with a fork, working to break the yolks with the steel tines. 

"Something else," he said finally. 

Inwardly, Mohinder sighed, seeing that Peter wasn't going to make this easy, not sure if he should keep going but finding that he needed to know more about what had happened to make Peter react like that. What was attacking him in his sleep. 

"You dreamed that you were hurt," he said, a statement now rather than a question. It was the only way to explain why Peter had immediately searched his body for injury upon waking. "Was someone attacking you or…?"

"I used to dream that there was this bomb that blew up New York," Peter said, interrupting Mohinder, "and the bomb was me." He bit his lip. "When I went off, my brother was the first to die because everyone else was running away but he was running toward me. I watched it happen over and over again." He gave Mohinder an unreadable sideways glance. 

"That must have been terrible," Mohinder commented, not sure what Peter meant by bringing this up. 

Peter shrugged. "Actually, it just seems stupid now," he said. "Compared to what really happened. New York is still here but Nathan died anyway." He swallowed, pouring his concoction into the waiting pan and continuing to stir it absently. "A friend came to see me the other night." 

Peter addressed the revelation to the wall in front of him as if he didn't mean for Mohinder to hear it at all. As a result, Peter didn't see the surprise that must have crossed Mohinder's face before he could stop it. Mohinder knew it would have been ridiculous to assume that Peter had always been alone just because he was alone now. It only made sense that he would have had some kind of life before fleeing New York, one populated by family, friends…even lovers. Mohinder knew that and yet he had never taken into consideration that Peter might still in any way be connected to that distant-seeming past or that it was still connected to him. 

He waited for Peter to go on. 

"This friend, he just kind of showed up out of nowhere. He wanted me to know that this other friend of mine is in trouble," Peter continued. He pressed his eyes closed as if silently admonishing himself. "Actually, she's not my friend. I mean, she is, but she's also…sort of my niece. Which is a long story. Anyway, she's in trouble and I'm worried about her and that was what my nightmare was about." 

He said this last in a rush as if he wouldn't be able to say it all otherwise, the way someone might rip off a hangnail in order not to prolong or delay the inevitable pain. 

"I see," Mohinder said, trying to be diplomatic now that they'd come to Peter's point, albeit in a roundabout way. "I didn't know you had a niece." It was more polite than observing he hadn't known that Peter had any friends either. 

Peter gave a gray-sounding chuckle. "Neither did I until right before Nathan died," he said. "Like I said, long story." 

"I suppose it must be," Mohinder said, thinking it was really quite amazing what the Petrelli family could hide from the ravenous media when it wanted to. Which in his mind only confirmed his former suspicions that Nathan Petrelli had purposely exploited the rumored state of Peter's mental health during his campaign for his own benefit. 

Shaking off his cynical thoughts, Mohinder tried to think what came next. Peter was being so vague that it was difficult to know what questions to ask. Whether Peter wanted him to be asking them at all. 

"Is there anything you can do to help her?"

"Claude thinks so," Peter said. 

"Claude is your friend," Mohinder guessed. 

Peter nodded. "He thinks so, but I think it's better if I don't get involved. I think I'll just make things worse. She doesn't need me. She has other people." 

Mohinder was almost sure that even Peter heard the falseness of self-delusion in his own voice. Privately, he wondered what the exact nature of the trouble could be. Peter spoke as though the girl in question was young. Was she a child? A teenager? Was she prone to the famous Petrelli family depression or was it something else? Without knowing, there didn't seem to be a way to comment on Peter's ability to help or harm his niece. 

In silence, Peter finished making the eggs and transferred them to a single plate with two forks. He walked over to Mohinder, who by now was sitting at his desk while the coded file played out in front of him. Peter found a chair for himself and set the plate between them. Together, they began to eat while Peter glanced curiously at the screen. 

"Is that part of your research?" He pointed his fork. 

Mohinder straightened, recognizing that it was now his turn to be deliberately vague. 

"Something like that," he said. "It's one of my father's files. Part of his work, I think. I've been trying to get into it for the better part of a year, but so far nothing." He typed in a few random letters, using the "Access Denied" window that popped up as a demonstration of his own failure.

Peter chewed thoughtfully. "There's this kid I know of who could probably have that cracked in five seconds flat," he said. "I heard he's really good with stuff like this. And he's only, like, ten or something. It's crazy." 

Mohinder raised an eyebrow. "I don't suppose there's a way for you to contact such a person, is there? I'm seriously desperate. I'll do anything, even if it means admitting that a ten year old is smarter than I am." 

Peter laughed, nearly losing a bit of egg he'd scooped up with his fork. "I wish I could help but Micah and his mom can be a little hard to track down sometimes from what I hear," he said. 

"Pity," Mohinder said. "I suppose I should just give it up, then. Give the government back its stipend and go back to driving cabs for a living. What do you think?"

Peter's eyes widened. "You used to drive cabs?"

"For a short while," Mohinder admitted. "In fact, I used to drive by your brother's campaign headquarters from time to time. All those posters in the windows." 

"Really?" Peter said. "I used to go there a lot." If possible, his eyes widened further. "Wouldn't it be weird if you drove me somewhere once?"

"It wouldn't be impossible," Mohinder said. He made a show of looking Peter up and down. "And you do seem strangely familiar all of a sudden," he added playfully. 

"Funny, I was just thinking the same thing about you," Peter replied. 

"Yes, I remember now," Mohinder said, stroking his chin. "As I recall, you didn't tip me very well." 

"You're lucky I tipped you at all, the way you drove," Peter said, playing along. "Getting us lost down all those side streets when I specifically told you the route I wanted to take." 

"A man has to eat, you know," Mohinder said. 

"True," Peter said musingly. "I guess I could give you the rest of the money now. Or I could think of better ways to make up for my poor tipping practices." He ran his foot up Mohinder's leg and wriggled his eyebrows in a way that ended up being more comical than seductive. 

"I suppose we can think of some way to settle the debt," Mohinder said. "Remember, there's interest to consider." 

Peter groaned. Mohinder grew more serious, pushing the eggs around his side of the plate without eating any. 

"So, what did you do?" he asked. "Before you left New York, I mean."

Peter scoffed. "I lived off my trust fund," he said. "Of course." 

For a dismaying moment, Mohinder thought he might be serious. Then, he caught the playful glint in Peter's eye and proceeded to glare. Finally, Peter relented and gave him the truth. 

"I spent some time as a hospice nurse," he said. "You know, reading newspapers to dying people. That kind of thing." 

"That sounds…noble," Mohinder said, though he felt a more apt description might have been "depressing." He couldn't imagine what it would be like, getting paid to watch over someone in their last moments. To be the one who had to wait for their last breath. 

"Yeah, well, I didn't want to be a lawyer," Peter said, as if this somehow explained his choice of profession. "Or a politician. Nathan was always telling me to get serious. Like what I was doing was just some kind of phase I had to go through. But I guess I thought I was being serious. For a while." 

"Just for a while?" Mohinder asked. At Peter's nod, he added, "Why did you stop?"

"I needed to save the world," Peter said, glancing up at Mohinder from beneath those maddening bangs. Mohinder was prepared to laugh off the answer until he realized there was a sincerity to it he didn't quite understand. Peter shifted in his chair. "Look, Mohinder, I need to tell you something." 

Mohinder set down his fork, a sinking feeling in his stomach as Peter leaned forward. 

"I'm a weird person," Peter confessed, taking Mohinder's hands in his and grasping his fingers as if he expected Mohinder to get up and walk away at any second. "I've been weird all my life. If Nathan was here, he'd tell you all about what a pain in the ass I am and how idiotic I can be and if Claude was here, he'd back him up the whole way." His lips quirked into a cloudy half-smile. "And because I'm weird, there are things I can't talk about. Things I can't really tell you. But what I can tell you is that I want this. No matter what. I want this. Okay?" 

Mohinder was taken aback. For a moment, he sat speechless before leaning forward, touching his forehead to Peter's. "Good," he said. "Because I want this, too." 


	9. Chapter 9

**A New Day at Midnight**

**Part 9/19**

In the end, Claude was right. It had to happen eventually and when it did, it happened the same morning Peter forgot to feel awkward as he stood beneath the steaming spray of the shower, Mohinder's arms snaking around his waist and pulling him close. 

"My god," Mohinder said as he entered the cramped stall, immediately reaching for the faucet. "Are you trying to give yourself third degree burns? How can you stand it?"

Peter stopped Mohinder's hand before he could twist the cold water up higher to compensate for the heat currently pouring down on them. The ready availability of hot water was something of an anomaly in an otherwise rundown apartment building and Peter enjoyed taking advantage of it even while Mohinder protested, claiming they were stealing from other, equally deserving residents. 

"You'll get used to it in a minute," Peter said. 

"If I don't suffocate first," Mohinder replied, kissing Peter's shoulder. 

Peter didn't need to read Mohinder's mind to know that this was going to be his response. The argument had become as familiar as sharing the small space of the shower stall, though he admittedly hadn't welcomed either at first. Until Mohinder's daily invasion of his morning privacy, Peter had thought showering together was something couples only did in movies and bad romance novels. He'd been completely freaked out the first time he'd felt the rush of cold air as Mohinder pulled the curtain aside, asking permission to join him. Peter had let him, holding himself stiffly throughout the entire encounter. It turned out there was absolutely nothing sexy about shampoo dripping into his eyes or the ungraceful way he'd kept slipping on the floor as he and Mohinder had struggled to arrange themselves comfortably. It was an experience Peter had been none too eager to repeat at the time. 

But then the original difficulty had settled into sensual routine. Now he could simply relax back into Mohinder's chest as Mohinder reached around to run a bar of soap over the flat plain of Peter's belly, working downward in a predictable pattern. He moaned, closing his eyes as Mohinder reached between his legs, exchanging the soap for Peter's shaft. This, he was now sure, was what set Mohinder apart from Peter's past lovers. This continual, tender reminder of how wanted he was. 

In times like these he could almost forget that Mohinder worked for the government. That he had stolen those drawings from Peter's apartment. That Claire was in trouble somewhere and that his friends had run out of options. 

It had been weeks since Claude had appeared in his apartment and with every passing day, Peter's guilt and worry mounted, building to a near-deafening crescendo. His dreams were becoming more graphic and the return to reality was taking longer every time. One day, when Mohinder was out he'd almost gone looking for the missing drawings, overtaken by the sudden need to see the future they contained, wanting to know if they showed anything about Claire. But then Mohinder had come home before he could gather his resolve and his mission had been abandoned. As a consequence, he remained blind to his own predictions. 

Mohinder gave one last firm stroke and Peter gave a sharp cry as he came. Panting in the aftermath, his ears were ringing but not loud enough that he didn't catch the gentle laugh coming from Mohinder. 

"I will never tire of seeing that look on your face," Mohinder said, whispering the sentiment in his ear like a confession. "Even if it means I have to stand under a scalding stream of water to see it." He pressed a kiss to Peter's jaw. 

Peter smiled, turning around so that he faced Mohinder. Mohinder raised his eyebrows in a kind of wordless challenge before Peter reached down to return the favor. Feeling Peter's hands on him, Mohinder's eyes fluttered closed and his lips parted so that his mouth hung open ever so slightly. His fingers sought purchase on the slippery wall in an effort to keep himself upright. When he came, it was with a sharp gasp followed by a low, drawn out moan of appreciation. His eyes opened reluctantly, glazed over with pleasure as he leaned in to kiss Peter thoroughly, nuzzling and biting at his neck playfully. 

"I'm going to go make coffee," Peter said, moving to separate himself from Mohinder so that he could reach for the towel he'd left outside the shower stall. 

"No, wait," Mohinder murmured, pulling Peter more tightly to him. Peter wrapped his arms around Mohinder and, for a moment, they simply rested there, content. 

Reluctantly, Mohinder let Peter go so that he could go about enacting the second part of what had become their morning routine. The implied domesticity of even having a routine baffled Peter as he waited avidly for his coffee to brew. The first time he'd made Mohinder's tea without having to stop to think about how strong or how sweet he liked it, Peter had been pretty horrified. Strange how his determination not to get too close to Mohinder had been so thoroughly shattered even while the lie he maintained guaranteed that there would always be a certain amount of distance between them. 

Mohinder emerged from the shower moments later and they shared their morning caffeine fix as usual--standing up in the kitchen. 

"I'm going to walk down to the newsstand in a few minutes," Mohinder announced unnecessarily. If there really was a routine, this was the third part of it: Mohinder running down to the newsstand on the corner for a copy of the morning paper before going to work at the computer the rest of the day. "It's a beautiful day. I don't suppose you'd want to come with me." 

Mohinder asked every day and it was customary for Peter to make an excuse to stay behind. But Mohinder was right. The weather was unusually mild and bright for that time of year. It was the first day in almost a week without the prediction of rain, so Peter considered his options before finally saying, 

"Yeah, what the hell. I could use some fresh air." 

Famous last words. 

In a life of cruel twists, Peter shouldn't have been surprised by what happened next. But walking down the sidewalk with Mohinder's arm unselfconsciously draped around his waist, Peter didn't see it coming. What he saw instead was the flashing lights of police cars and an ambulance, a crowd gathered around a crumpled body in the middle of the street. Someone had been hit. 

"Jesus," Peter breathed as they drew closer to the scene, his and Mohinder's steps slowing before coming to a full stop. 

The chaos of thoughts and feelings hit Peter like a brick wall, nearly sending him reeling as different, silent voices cried out in collective horror. 

_Is she dead? Dear God, is she dead?_

_What the hell happened? How could the guy not have seen her?_

Amidst this, he felt the urgency of the paramedics as they worked, though the girl they were trying to save was clearly dead. She'd been run down by a large van with the name and phone number of a local flower shop painted across the side in flowing script. Meanwhile, the distraught driver stood with a police officer, trying to explain what had happened. He wasn't injured himself and Peter could feel his desperation to be believed. _I didn't see her. I swear I didn't see her._

Distressed, Peter averted his eyes before he could full absorb the fact that the dead girl--face down, dark hair fanned out in a pool of her own blood--was no older than Claire. Of course, if it had been Claire, there would be no dead girl in the middle of the street and the cause of the uproar would be entirely different. But the association remained and Peter found himself fighting a wave of nausea. 

News crews were beginning to arrive and Peter was overcome by an intense need to flee. But when he went to pull Mohinder back in the direction of their apartment building, he noticed for the first time how the other man was hypnotized by the gruesome scene, his wide gaze memorizing every detail as a deep frown pulled at his lips. 

"Mohinder?" Peter said, touching the other man's shoulder in the hope that it would bring him back to himself. "Mohinder, come on. Let's just go." 

But Mohinder didn't move or respond. Rather than stepping away from the crowd, he stepped toward it, craning his neck to get a better look. 

"I've seen this," Mohinder said. "I feel like I've seen this before. I know I have." 

"Probably in a movie or something," Peter suggested, picking up on Mohinder's profound sense of déjà vu as he involuntarily tuned in to the other man's thoughts. "Please, let's just go back. Before someone tries to interview us or something." The cameras were already searching the crowd for worthy subjects. 

"Right," Mohinder murmured distractedly, allowing himself to be led away. 

They arrived back at the apartment without the newspaper they'd set out for. Once there, Mohinder moved around as if in a fog. He went through the motions of turning on his laptop and calling up the famous encrypted file without seeming to notice that he was doing any of it. The accident had shaken him in ways Peter couldn't describe. Something more than just the shock of having so unexpectedly witnessed the death of another person. All day, Mohinder kept the file on his computer open but his blaring thoughts revealed to Peter how little of his mind was on his work. Instead, he ransacked his brain in search of a memory that matched the accident they'd seen but hours passed and still no answer revealed itself. 

As they ate dinner that night, Mohinder took the uncharacteristic step of turning the television to the day's news before sitting down at the table. At Peter's questioning look, he shrugged, explaining, "We never did get the newspaper this morning. I suppose I'm feeling a bit out of the loop. I hope you don't mind." 

"No, go ahead," Peter said. 

The way the kitchen area was arranged, Peter's back was to the television as he ate but that didn't stop him from hearing loud and clear the top story of the night. A grim news anchor reported a significant rise in the number of alleged incidents involving the illegal use of special abilities over the past year. The government reassured the public that many of the reports had turned out to be false alarms but had still seen fit to issue a checklist of what steps to take if such an incident was witnessed. As he listened, the food in Peter's mouth turned to ash. He concentrated on ignoring the rest of the report. 

He didn't notice the sudden change in Mohinder's mood until the sound of a fork clattering to the floor had him nearly jumping out of his own seat. Startled, he looked up to find Mohinder completely unmindful of his lost utensil, focused as he was on whatever it was that was playing out on the screen before him. 

Peter turned and immediately recognized the accident from earlier. Edited so that various shots of the ambulance, police cars and the crowd flashed by in quick succession between interviews with witnesses, the report was perfunctory to the point of boredom. Before Peter had the chance to figure out what it was that had so affected Mohinder, the other man was out of his chair and storming across the apartment, reaching his desk in a matter of seconds. Concerned and confused, Peter had no choice but to follow. 

"What's going on?" he asked, watching as Mohinder slammed open a drawer and began to frantically empty it of its contents. Papers, notebooks, pens and folders flew everywhere, carpeting the floor in debris. Mohinder's hands shook as he dug, singularly focused on his task. Peter felt panic rising within the other man as he searched. 

Claude's warning echoed in his mind: _You can't hide forever._

After an endless series of minutes, Mohinder found what it was he was looking for. He threw onto the surface of the desk a delicately taped-together piece of notebook paper, which he worked to flatten with the palms of his hand. 

Peter took a subtle step toward the door before being frozen under Mohinder's wild-eyed gaze. 

"Do you see what I'm seeing?" Mohinder asked. 

From this angle, Peter couldn't see anything but it seemed wise not to say so. 

"The accident from earlier," Mohinder continued. "I told you that I'd seen it somewhere before. I was sure of it. All day I tried to think where it could have been. A dream or perhaps a movie, like you suggested." He glanced down at the paper in front of him. "But it wasn't a movie at all. It was this." He held up the drawing. It was upside down but Peter could see how in its own rough way it was an image of a girl who had been hit by a truck, a crowd gathering around her body. 

_You should tell your boyfriend to stop stealing from you._

Peter swallowed. "I don't understand," he said. 

"Don't lie to me," Mohinder bellowed, throwing the picture at him ineffectually. "You drew that! That exact scene as we saw it this morning. You even put the name of the florist on the van." He stabbed his finger at the drawing, which now lay like a gauntlet on the floor between them. "What the hell is going on?"

Peter had the feeling Mohinder would have accepted almost any explanation at that point if it meant Peter not telling him what he was already beginning to figure out. Even if Peter had suggested something ridiculous like an elaborate practical joke for which the van and an actress had been hired ahead of time, Mohinder would have believed him readily and forgiven him eventually. 

But then Mohinder asked the question that made it impossible for Peter to lie. 

"Are you?" he asked. "Are you one of Them?"

Peter opened his mouth and then closed it when nothing came out. He cleared his throat with difficulty before trying again. "You have to understand--"

"There's nothing to understand," Mohinder growled, slamming his fist on the desk. "You let me talk about my father. About the man who killed him. About his research. All of it." His voice rose with every syllable. "For what? What are you, some kind of spy for your people? Were you planning on using me for information? Killing me the way Sylar killed my father?"

"What?" Peter said. He hadn't expected Mohinder's panic to take them down this route. "No. God, no. It's nothing like that. Mohinder, what I can do…what I could do…I haven't done it in a long time. I didn't even know I drew those pictures, okay? You have to believe me." 

Mohinder shook his head. "You have an hour," he said. "Then I'm calling the authorities. I'm going to tell them everything I know." 

Peter's eyes widened. "Mohinder--"

"One hour," Mohinder repeated, turning his back. 

Facing away as he was, Mohinder couldn't have seen it when Peter chose that moment to fade from sight. The barrier between Peter and his instincts finally broke down and he did what he knew he should have done in the first place: he ran. 

TBC


	10. Chapter 10

**A New Day at Midnight**

**Part 10/19**

When Mohinder made his threat to call the authorities, he did so with the full intention of following through. But as soon as he heard the door close behind Peter, his resolve drained from him and all he could do was sag into his chair, head in hands, and hide his eyes from the picture that had started it all. That damn picture. 

Peter could draw the future. He couldn't get it out of his head. Days passed and though he tried to carry on as normal, the thought kept announcing itself at the most unexpected moments, always as if Mohinder was thinking it for the first time. It never lost its edge. _Peter could draw the future._

What that meant for the other drawings he'd hidden, Mohinder couldn't bring himself to consider. He wanted nothing more than to burn them all and never think of them again, but every time he reached for the desk drawer where he'd stowed them away, he'd be overtaken by an uncharacteristic fit of procrastination, suddenly remembering something else he had to do. Something more important like washing the dishes or folding the laundry. Anything that didn't involve thinking about Peter. 

Despite his accusations, he had no real hypothesis for why Peter had done what he'd done. Whether he'd really insinuated himself into Mohinder's life to reenact his father's encounter with Sylar or otherwise--it didn't matter. Mohinder had opened himself to Peter in the first place because he'd believed Peter was a kindred spirit, someone who understood what it was like to lose a loved one to one of Them. Knowing the truth made Mohinder feel violated. Even more so because he couldn't deny that what he'd felt for Peter--what he continued to feel--was very real. He'd been taken in and his failure to recognize the monster when he saw it made his stomach turn. 

But hadn't he always known? The thought niggled at his mind. While it was true that he'd been unaware of the psychic implications of the drawings when he'd first seen them, hadn't he always known they were special in some unnamable way? He'd seen a story in those drawings and sought to understand what he could of it in a way that could not be attributed solely to his fascination with Peter. So, couldn't the argument be made? Hadn't he always known?

The apartment building where Mohinder and Peter lived required that rent be paid by the week rather than the month. The consequences of Peter's disappearance in terms of his living space didn't fully occur to Mohinder until, after several weeks of delinquency, the landlord started pounding on Peter's door, demanding payment of the money he was owed. Mohinder watched the spectacle from his doorway, half-expecting Peter to emerge with the money in hand. Instead, he felt a detached numbness as the landlord pulled out a master key and entered the space that had belonged to Peter. He was gone for several moments before re-emerging, a look of disgust on his face. When he caught sight of Mohinder, he merely shrugged. 

"No body," he said as if this was the most common cause of missed payments. "Looks like the guy just left. All his stuff's still there. Know anything about that?"

Mohinder shook his head, watching as the landlord disappeared down the same set of stairs Peter had so gracelessly tumbled down the first day they'd met. Everything seemed to be attached to a memory these days. He wondered when the involuntary sentimental association would end. 

Going back into his apartment, he closed the door behind him and was immediately aware of something being off. Looking to his left, he noticed that one of the windows was open, the autumn air chilling the apartment. Then there was a sound like boots scraping against the floor. Mohinder barely had time to feel the stirring of the air next to him before he was slammed against the wall by an unseen force. 

His cry of terror was cut off when he felt something like cold fingers wrap themselves around his throat hard enough to cut off his air and bruise his skin. He gasped and choked, the struggle to breathe dulling somewhat the surprise of seeing a face appear suddenly out of the nothingness before his eyes. Psychotic fury strained his attacker's features, teeth bared behind an unkempt beard as he growled,

"Where is he?"

Mohinder was slammed against the wall again, his head knocking against it hard enough so that bursts of light exploded before his eyes, obscuring what he could see of the other man's face. For an insane moment, he had a flashback of Peter rubbing his head and saying wryly, _Wow. I always that that was just a figure of speech. Seeing stars._

"I said where the bloody hell is he?" the man roared again. 

Mohinder tried to answer but by then his lungs were burning with the need to take a breath. The world began to fade at the edges before complete darkness rushed upon him. The last thing he heard as he was dropped to the ground was a disgusted, "For fuck's sake." 

"Christ, Claude. I can see your fucking handprints on the guy's neck." 

"You know how bad this is, right? I mean, you said this guy works for the government. Sooner or later they're going to notice he's missing and when they do they're going to come looking for him." 

"I thought you said jealous rages weren't your thing." 

"For fuck's sake, will you two shut it already? I've never seen such a pair of drama queens in all my life." 

"This is serious, Claude!"

"Well if painter boy here would call off his bloody strike--"

"What? So this is my fault now? You know, maybe if your boyfriend would stop being such a fucking whore all the time I wouldn't have to--"

"Guys, shut up. I think his eyes are opening." 

Judging from the slits of light that were now penetrating the darkness Mohinder had been floating in up to this point, he could only assume that this last comment was directed at him. With effort, he was able to open his eyes completely on a world that was stubbornly reluctant to come into focus. Vaguely, he became aware that he was lying atop a soft, flat surface--probably a mattress--and that he was surrounded by three indistinguishable faces, all framed by an array of intense colors. The smell of fresh paint fumes burned his nostrils and he found he couldn't keep back a groan at the throbbing pain in the back of his head. 

"You okay, man?" one of the three voices asked warily. 

"Are you bloody joking?" a second voice cut in before Mohinder could try to answer. "This bastard may very well have Peter's body stuffed under the sodding floorboards and you're practically asking him over to tea, you are. I thought you were supposed to have training for situations like these, Mother Matt." 

Mohinder's vision cleared in time to catch the round-faced man named Matt roll his eyes at the second man's taunting. Meanwhile, a third man--long haired with a thin face covered in streaks of paint--mumbled, "Like you've never killed Peter before." 

"Yeah, well, who hasn't?" the second man conceded. Mohinder recognized the bearded man as the one who had attacked him in his apartment in the first place. "But I was trying to make a point at the time. This is entirely different." 

Wanting to do something to make his position less vulnerable while the others continued their argument, Mohinder attempted to push himself into a sitting position but was stilled when the throb in the back of his head swelled. Laying back with a groan, he wondered where he was and exactly how long he'd been unconscious.

"Just a couple of hours, give or take." 

Mohinder looked up at the man who had spoken--Matt. "What?" he said. 

"Oh, uh, you were wondering how long you've been out," Matt said. He cleared his throat. "It's been a couple of hours." 

Mohinder blinked. Had he spoken aloud without realizing it?

"No, man," Matt said, tapping his own temple. "I can hear you. What you're thinking."

"Mind reader, mate," the bearded man added in case Mohinder hadn't caught on. 

"You mean you're…" Mohinder trailed off, realizing how ridiculous the question was. After all, he'd seen the bearded man appear from thin air right before his eyes. There should have been no doubt as to what kind of people he was talking to. What kind of people he was being held hostage by. 

"Listen, we don't want to hurt you," Matt said. 

"Not that we won't," the invisible man put in. 

Matt ignored him. "See, we're friends of Peter Petrelli. There's something we need to talk to him about and we think you might be able to tell us where we could find him." 

"Also, we think you may have stuffed him under the floorboards."

"Claude, seriously--" Matt began. 

"Claude," Mohinder said, his spinning mind finally latching on to the familiar name. "You're Peter's friend. The one who came to see him that night--" He cut himself off, thinking of the story Peter had told him about the friend who had brought him news of a niece in trouble. Aware that his thoughts were being scanned, Mohinder made a concerted effort to block out the fact that that had also been the first night he and Peter had slept together but judging from the redness that touched Matt's cheeks, he wasn't entirely successful at doing so. 

"Oh lovely," Claude said. "What else did he tell you?"

"He knows about Claire," Matt answered for Mohinder, still picking up on his thoughts. 

"Claire," Mohinder said, shaking his head at the unfamiliar name. "I don't know anything about anyone named Claire." This time, when he tried to sit up he managed to at least prop himself on his elbows. It struck him that his captors had not bothered to restrain him and yet he didn't get the feeling they would readily allow him to leave. "What exactly is it that you want with Peter?"

"Claire is Peter's niece," Matt explained. "You need to tell us where he is." 

"Don't even think you're leaving until you do," Claude added. 

Mohinder looked up at each of the three faces surrounding him and in them he could see the lines of genuine worry and stress, sleep deprivation and even the beginnings of what looked like hopelessness. Mohinder was not exactly comforted by the thought that bringing him here must have been something of a desperate move on their part. Claude had approached Peter once before, asking for his help. Weeks had passed since then and Mohinder could only guess that whatever the situation was, it had grown much worse since that night. 

"I haven't seen Peter in weeks," he said finally. "We had an argument. I asked him to leave. I haven't seen him since." 

"What did you fight about?" Matt asked, voice neutral. 

Mohinder hesitated. He couldn't exactly lie to a man who could read his mind but confessing to his outrage at the discovery of Peter's powers did not seem the most advisable move. Choosing his words carefully, Mohinder went for the most tactful version of the truth he could find. 

"We argued about some drawings he'd done. Of the future." 

Claude snorted. "I bloody well knew it," he said. "Tell us, Dr. Suresh, which one was it tipped you off? I know you were especially taken with the one of the two stick figures lying in bed but it couldn't have been that. So, was it the grave yard? The screaming girl?"

"It was the car accident," Mohinder answered. "But how do you know…"

"Invisible man," Claude said, fading in and out of invisibility as if to illustrate his point. 

"You were spying on me," Mohinder said, a statement rather than a question. "You were in my apartment." He wondered if that had been part of the plan all along. If Peter had known Claude was there, watching him. 

"Aye, I was there," Claude acknowledged, remorseless. "Don't worry, though. I didn't stick around for any of the naughty bits. Didn't need to what with Isaac's lovely rendering of one of your more intimate moments. Truly inspiring work."

Isaac crossed his arms belligerently. "Don't even fucking start, man," he said. 

"You mean I shouldn't tell the good doctor here that the only reason he's stuck in the junkie motel is because our resident psychic painter has decided at the crucial moment that he's too much of a prude to risk helping us look for our missing boy lest he accidentally paint him once again in the throes of passion--"

"Psychic painter?" Mohinder asked, interrupting Claude's rant. He turned to Isaac, whose eyes burned with impotent fury. "So you're like Peter, then. You can draw the future." 

Isaac raised his eyebrows and the three men exchanged looks. 

"So he doesn't know everything," Isaac said mysteriously. 

Mohinder didn't bother asking what Isaac meant by this, knowing he wouldn't get an answer. As it was, he knew what he had seen, the unmistakable parallels between Peter's drawing and the true scene of the accident. If Isaac could paint the future, that meant he and Peter shared the ability. Except, looking around the loft-like space, Mohinder gathered that Isaac was clearly the more talented of the two, artistically speaking. 

"Look," Mohinder said in what was either resolve or resignation. "I obviously don't understand what's going on here. I have nothing of use to offer you. I do have contacts with the government, but I'm not interested in giving them any information about Peter or anything I've seen today. Frankly, I don't even know what it is I've seen." 

"Yeah, well, it's not as if we're concerned about that," Claude said. "See, we have a Haitian for that sort of thing. Or we would have if we could find the bloody wind chimes." He glared at Isaac, who rolled his eyes. "Thing is, useless as you are, we'd let you go with no one being the wiser but we think you might be wrong about not having any useful information to offer us. Maybe you don't know where Peter is but you do have this little laptop computer and a portable hard drive, both of which I took the liberty of confiscating from your flat while I was there." 

Mohinder raised his eyebrows. "You stole my computer?" he said. 

Claude nodded. "I've been watching you and I know how interested the government is in that file of yours," he said. "Well, we're interested in it too, we've decided. So while we're sitting around here waiting for Peter to show up or for his body to surface, you're going to keep up with your work cracking that password, right? Except now you'll be working for us. And doesn't that sound like a bloody barrelful of monkeys?" 

"The file is nothing," Mohinder said. "Even the government doesn't think so. They're just using it to keep an eye on me and make sure I don't do something stupid like try to legitimize the evolution of special abilities in the eyes of the general public."

"Even so," Claude said. 

After that, there was no more argument. 


	11. Chapter 11

**A New Day at Midnight**

**Part 11/19**

Another week passed and still there was no sign of Peter. 

Despite his continued captivity, Mohinder found that the routine of being forced to work for Peter's friends differed little from the routine of working for the government of his own free will. He still sat at the computer for hours on end, trying and retrying passwords in endless staccato streams. It was just that now he had to share his space with the tools of Isaac's work and tolerate the feeling of always being watched by the ever-vigilant Claude. 

Claude, Isaac and Matt were the only people Mohinder saw on a regular basis, though wandering as he did occasionally among Isaac's paintings, he got the feeling that this underground resistance was much larger than he could have imagined from what little he had seen. So many people, and they were all caught in scenes of violence far more graphic than the ones Mohinder had seen in Peter's rough drawings. A cheerleader screaming in horror at some unseen threat, a blonde woman trapped inside a mirror while an evil double smirked at her predicament, people with the tops of their heads cut off. That these pictures in any way represented reality chilled Mohinder. That Peter was a part of it disturbed him all the more. 

In this respect, one painting stood out from the rest. It stood out anyway, being that it wasn't the original work but instead a reproduction. But in it, the young cheerleader that featured in so many of the pictures stood over Peter's prone body, a torn homecoming sign hanging in the background. Peter's eyes were vacant, he was covered in blood. He looked dead. Was this the past? Something Isaac had drawn long ago, something that had already happened or been prevented? Or was it the future? Was this the kind of fate Peter would be met with if he came back to the people in this loft? 

Haunted by thoughts like these, Mohinder tended to avoid this particular piece but when he found Claude standing in front of it one afternoon, visible and contemplative, he felt compelled to stand with him. They both gazed at the image in silence and Mohinder wondered at the sentiment he saw in Claude's eyes. 

"So tell me," Claude said when the silence had gone on long enough, "are you really this daft with passwords or are you messing about with us, putting on a show until your government friends come to the rescue?"

Mohinder lifted his shoulders. "I'm afraid I'm just that daft," he replied. "A year I've been working on my father's file and I've come up with nothing. It's quite pathetic."

"It really is," Claude agreed. 

A pause followed in which they both stood transfixed by Isaac's work. 

"What happened to the original painting?" Mohinder asked, cocking his head to the side. 

"This one looks like a photo someone took to show a potential buyer or something." 

"Nathan Petrelli destroyed it," Claude said flatly. "At least, that's what I heard. I wasn't around then. But the story goes he was so rattled seeing a picture of his dead brother that he ruined it to try to stop Peter from going to Texas to save some high school cheerleader he didn't even know." 

Mohinder blinked. "So Nathan Petrelli knew about Peter, then? About his…ability?"

"'Course he did," Claude said as if this should have been obvious. "Why do you think he was trying so hard to convince people all the time that Peter was barking mad? So they wouldn't find out and come with the bloody pitchforks and torches, that's why." 

"He was trying to protect Peter," Mohinder said. 

"He was trying to protect himself," Claude corrected. "Even if they didn't figure out about Nathan, nobody's going to vote someone with a freak like Peter in their family into Congress. I don't care who's pulling the strings on that one, there's only so much you can make up as you go along." 

"What was there to figure out about Nathan?" Mohinder asked. 

"Christ, Peter really didn't tell you anything, did he?" Claude said. "That's good, I suppose. Shows the boy is learning some discretion. Took long enough. Nathan would be proud, that's for bloody sure." 

"I don't understand," Mohinder said.

Claude rolled his eyes. "Nathan Petrelli could fly," he said, flapping his hands like wings as if to illustrate to a mental incompetent exactly what flying involved. "What kind of geneticist are you that you don't know that freaks like that run in the family? If Peter has it, Nathan would have too." 

It was Mohinder's turn to roll his eyes. "Pardon me, but I'm still coming to terms with the fact that Peter can draw the future," he said. "It might take a little more time for the exact minutiae of it all to sink in." 

Claude cocked an eyebrow. "Well, if you're still trying to get over Peter being able to draw the future then wait until you find out what else he can do," he said. 

"What are you talking about?"

Claude sighed. "Peter can draw the future all right," he said. "But only because he knows someone else--namely, that long-haired junkie over there--who can draw the future. He can also fly, turn invisible, and read minds, among other things. Oh, and he can heal himself." He nodded toward the painting. "Do you follow?"

Mohinder looked again. 

"He fell down the stairs," he said. "The day I met him, he fell down the stairs and hit his head. He should have cracked it open. But he was fine. There wasn't even a bruise afterward." 

"Clumsy idiot," Claude murmured almost affectionately. 

"You're telling me this…," Mohinder began, but couldn't finish the sentence. 

"Is perfectly real," Claude said, finishing for him. "He died that night. Died a coupla times, actually. Killed him myself once, back when I was trying to teach him how to control his powers. Threw him off a building to try to get him to fly but he ended up just getting impaled on a taxi cab. Luckily he managed to channel Claire, otherwise I wouldn't have gotten to punch him out just moments later." He grinned, clearly pleased with the memory. He pointed at the cheerleader in the picture. "That's her, there. Claire. He met her that night. Also met a man called Sylar. Don't suppose you know anything about that." 

Claude's tone suggested that his invisible spying had showed him exactly how much Mohinder knew about that. 

"Peter knew Sylar?" Mohinder said, his voice hollow, his heart like a stone in his belly. 

"They weren't in cahoots, if that's what you're thinking," Claude said, annoyed. "Sylar was going after Claire. Peter saved her and got himself killed in the process. Temporarily, of course." 

"But he never said anything," Mohinder said. "When I told him what happened to my father, he never said anything about knowing Sylar."

"I don't think coming face to face with a violent serial killer is anything anyone would want to brag about," Claude said. "Especially considering Peter didn't exactly win that fight. Then again, that is the night the government apprehended Sylar so it wasn't a total loss. Guess they're good for something after all. From time to time." 

"You said that Peter can do all those things because he draws his powers from other people," Mohinder said. He remembered what little he'd been allowed to see of his father's research before it had been taken away and classified. "Sylar did that. All his powers he got by taking them from others." He felt his brow furrow. "So Peter is like Sylar." 

"Well, when Sylar wanted someone else's power he had to kill them to get it," Claude said. "Whereas all Peter had to do was stand next to someone and not even for a prolonged period of time." Sarcastic, he added, "Oh, and there's also the fact that Sylar is a psychopathic serial killer who liked to rip off the tops of people's heads. I think it's fair to say there's a small difference. I don't blame you for not being able to spot it." 

Mohinder ignored this. "I just want to understand. You said Nathan Petrelli destroyed the original piece because he was trying to prevent Peter from going to Texas to save his own niece--Nathan's daughter."

Claude's expression was dry. "Nathan didn't know Claire was his daughter at the time. Christ, can't you keep up? Do I need to draw you a diagram or something?"

Mohinder remembered as Claude said this that Peter hadn't known about his niece until shortly before Nathan had died. Apparently he'd saved Claire's life believing her to be a stranger to him, not knowing they were related. If he hadn't, as Claude had said, been able to spot the difference between Sylar and Peter before, he could see it clearly now. 

"What happened to Claire?" Mohinder asked. 

Claude grew serious. "The government took her," he said. 

"Why?"

"Same reason they killed Nathan," Claude said. "To get to Peter, most likely." 

The blank look on Mohinder's face clearly dismayed Claude. 

"Oh don't tell me you actually bought that hysterical rubbish about Nathan Petrelli and his family being killed by one of us," Claude said. "Not knowing what you know. About what Nathan could do." 

"If I remember correctly, Nathan Petrelli supported the idea of harsh punishments for the illegal use of special abilities," Mohinder said. "Or so he said."

"Aye, a traitor to his own kind you might say," Claude said. "But he betrayed the government big time when they found out Peter was quickly becoming a central figure in the resistance. They told Nathan to turn his brother in or else. When he wouldn't do it, they decided to change tactics. They killed him hoping it would deter Peter from further activism. And guess what? It worked." 

"Then why take Claire?" Mohinder asked. "If Peter's already doing what they want him to do, why do they need to use her to get to him?"

"Because now they know what it is Peter can do," Claude said. "They figured it out or someone told them. Who knows? Point is, Peter's something of a rare specimen and they want to take him in for studying. Try to see if there's a way to replicate what he can do."

"You mean inhibit," Mohinder said. "They want to inhibit his powers, not replicate them." 

"That's what they'd have you believe," Claude said. "They want to cure all people with special abilities for the protection of the general public. Yeah, right." He sounded close to spitting. "What they want is a way to understand and copy what it is we do so it can be taken away from the likes of us and given to people who are more worthy. Unfortunately, a lot of us tend to get killed in the process because it's not like they know what the fuck it is they're doing. But I think the government feels that if they could understand Peter and what he does the death rate might go down because they wouldn't need to do the testing at all anymore. All they'd need to do is have freaks like us stand in a room with the chosen ones and let them absorb our powers. Of course, if Peter gets killed in the process of figuring all this out, then it's two birds with one stone as far as they're concerned. You follow?"

Mohinder nodded reluctantly, knowing what Claude was saying and yet not entirely convinced that it wasn't just the product of a paranoid and eccentric imagination. A conspiracy theory. "How do you know all this?" he asked. 

Claude's face darkened. "I used to work for them back in the day," he said. "Not unlike you, I guess. See, before things got really ugly I was something of a mole. I helped them find and bring in people like me and then one day I wasn't useful anymore and they tried to dispose of me. Now I work for the other side and, as irony would have it, our current mole is the same man who was my partner in the business way back when. Unfortunately, as convolution would have it, he's also Claire's adoptive father--yet another twist in the Petrelli family soap opera. His people won't let him near Claire. They're afraid he'll get squeamish and ruin their plan to lure Peter in." 

"They're torturing her, aren't they?" Mohinder asked, remembering the picture Peter had drawn of the girl on the table, the agonizing scream being ripped from her as blood pooled on the floor. 

"Peter got his ability to heal from Claire," Claude said. "Let's just say it's not entirely unlikely that they want to see how something like that works. Which probably means inflicting a lot of wounds and measuring how long it takes before they're fully healed." 

Mohinder swallowed with difficulty. "What is it you expect Peter to do if he does come back?" he asked. 

Claude shrugged. "Don't know, exactly," he said. "Peter was always an idiot about these things. Back before Nathan died, he would have gone rushing after Claire like he did the first time. Blind stupidity and all. These days…" He shrugged again. 

"These days he's trying very hard to live as a civilian," Mohinder guessed. "And I ruined it for him by discovering the truth."

Claude sighed. "Maybe Peter needed it to be ruined for him," he said. "You don't understand how it was. I mean, the kid literally tossed himself off a building to prove to his brother he could fly. What he lacked in intelligence and planning skills, he made up for in passion. Then Nathan was killed and he fell to pieces. Ran away to fuck knows where and I let him go. A year with him away and don't think the others have forgiven me for that, either." 

It sounded to Mohinder like it wasn't just the others who hadn't forgiven Claude for letting Peter go, but he was careful not to say so. Instead, something else Claude had said lodged in his mind and he found himself casting a glance out the window, seeing the gray early November day outside. 

"A year," Mohinder repeated. "It's been a year since Nathan Petrelli died." 

"Almost to the day," Claude said. 

An image flashed in Mohinder's mind: a crudely drawn graveyard with a headstone bearing the name of Petrelli. A patch of flattened grass, two figures standing in the distance: one drawn more lightly than the other as if it were a ghost. Or an invisible man. 

"I think I know where Peter is," Mohinder said. 


	12. Chapter 12

**A New Day at Midnight**

**Part 12/19**

Finding out which cemetery Nathan Petrelli and his family were buried in turned out to be the easy part. All it took was a few well-worded internet searches to find old articles detailing exactly where the would-be politician had been laid to rest. Finding the actual grave, on the other hand, was a different story entirely. 

It didn't help that Mohinder had Claude invisibly harassing him every step of the way, making Mohinder look like a crazed lunatic talking to himself while others tried to pay their respects to their loved ones. Claude's insults became particularly colorful when, after an unfortunate misinterpretation of the map they'd been given at the information center at the gate, they ended up in a remote quadrant occupied by flat, crumbling stones laid flush with the long grass. Certainly not the more affluent section of the cemetery, which was where Nathan Petrelli was sure to be. Retracing their steps, they started again, searching until they found the correct location. From the distance of the path on which they stood, Mohinder recognized the Petrelli resting place by the miniature flag Peter had included in his drawing. He caught sight of it standing forlorn against one of the larger headstones. 

What he didn't see was Peter. 

"He's not here," he said, disappointed. "We'll have to wait. See if he shows up…"

Claude snorted, shifting easily back to visibility. "Are you bloody joking?" he said. "Do you not see the ass print in the grass?" He pointed, directing Mohinder's attention to the flattened lawn over Nathan's grave. Mohinder remembered that he had seen such a feature in Peter's picture as well but noted wryly that he had not been as quick to note its exact shape as Claude was. 

Beside him, Claude began searching the ground, collecting small stones. Hefting one in his hand, he approximated an aim and threw it with force. The arc of its trajectory was cut off abruptly just above that flattened patch of grass, seeming to bounce off something before falling to the ground, its descent accompanied by a colorful muttering that seemed to originate from nowhere. 

So much for respect for the dead, Mohinder thought. 

Claude readied himself to throw a second stone, but having gotten the point of the demonstration, Mohinder reached out to stop him. "Do you want to talk to him or should I?" It seemed important to convey that continuing to throw stones was not an option. 

Claude shrugged. "It's a toss up between which of us he'd least like to see," he said. "But I already tried once, mate. You should have a go at it." He didn't exactly sound hopeful about Mohinder's chances. 

Nevertheless, Mohinder approached the grave, stopping just short of it as a precaution against stepping on a man he couldn't see. He slipped his hands in his pockets and affected a casual stance. 

"Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought I read somewhere once that placing an American flag on someone's grave is meant as a way to honor a fallen hero." He crouched down, sensing that Peter was sitting and hoping to put himself at eye level with the other man. "Did you put that there?"

The grass shifted. He heard Peter sigh. "What are you doing here?" his disembodied voice asked. 

Mohinder had anticipated the question but had not been able to formulate any kind of acceptable explanation for his presence on what was so clearly hallowed ground in Peter's eyes. 

"You drew this once," he said finally. "Don't you remember?"

"No," Peter said. "We're talking about the drawings you stole, right?"

Mohinder nodded. 

"I don't remember drawing any of those," he said. "All I remember is ripping them all up afterward." This said pointedly. 

"Perhaps you should invest in a paper shredder, then," Mohinder said dryly. "The cross-cut kind that makes it nearly impossible for someone to piece something back together once it's been destroyed." 

"Or maybe other people should learn to mind their own damn business," Peter replied caustically. "None of this would have happened if you hadn't…" He cut himself off. "Why are you here?" he asked more forcefully this time as if only just realizing the question had never been answered. 

Mohinder sighed. "Claude is with me," he said. "In case you couldn't tell by the flying rocks aimed at your head." He cleared his throat. "You should know he accosted me in my apartment about a week ago. He brought me to Isaac's loft for an interrogation, believing I had stuffed you under the floorboards." 

His only answer was stony silence. 

"You have a very colorful group of friends," Mohinder commented. 

It was a strange thing, not being able to see Peter but still sensing him through the stirring of air when he moved, the emanation of body heat. Sitting there, Mohinder could feel him vibrate with tension and hostility. He was scared. 

More than anything, Mohinder hated that his very presence frightened Peter and that he was equally frightened in return. Part of him ached to move behind Peter, pull him close to his chest and simply hold him as they'd done so many times in the past. The other part of him harshly reminded the first that the Peter who'd fit so easily in his arms didn't exist. Or if he did, he was merely one facet of this much more complicated person. The exact reality of this new Peter was a mystery to him. One he found himself approaching with apprehension. 

"Stop it," Peter said suddenly. 

"Stop what?" Mohinder asked. 

Peter appeared before him then, all at once as if the sunlight had hit him in just the right way as it appeared from behind a cloud. He sat with his knees drawn up, hands resting atop them. He didn't look at Mohinder as he spoke, instead addressing his words to the headstone bearing his brother's name as if his heavily shadowed eyes were too weary to drag themselves from that spot. 

"You're thinking really loudly," Peter said, accusing. "You do that a lot." 

"I do?" Mohinder said. 

Peter nodded, looking at his hands now. Stubbornly refusing to elaborate. 

Mohinder sighed. "I didn't know," he said, the statement encompassing so much more than the volume of his thoughts. 

"You weren't supposed to know," Peter pointed out. "Anyway, I wasn't trying to trick you. I wasn't pretending to be something I'm not just to get something from you. Information or whatever. I'm not like he is. I wouldn't do that." 

Mohinder knew without asking that Peter was referring to Sylar. 

"I know," Mohinder said. 

"No," Peter said, looking at him now, a frank look on his face. "You don't. Not really. Mohinder, Sylar killed your father. And knowing him, he probably enjoyed doing it. He'd probably be out killing people right now if the government didn't have him in custody." He blew out a breath. "It's like you think I'm on his team or something."

Mohinder didn't respond. There was nothing he could say. 

"The thing is, Sylar killed me too," Peter said, more quiet now. "I could never be what he is." 

"Peter, you don't need to explain to me that you're not a serial killer," Mohinder said. "I admit that when I found out what you were, I thought my worst fear had come true. That history had repeated itself. Another Suresh taken in by one of Them only to learn the truth too late." 

"It wasn't like that," Peter mumbled. "I was just trying to be normal." 

It was Mohinder's turn to be frank. "No, you weren't. Not really. Otherwise, why would you have come back to New York? The very place where your anonymity is least sustainable. You can't honestly have expected your attempt at normality to last with the other members of the resistance so close by, in a place where they could so easily contact you. Not here." 

Something flickered in Peter's eyes, but he remained unresponsive. 

"You aren't normal, Peter," he said. "You're extraordinary. What you are and what you can do would have fascinated my father if he was still here to see it." 

Peter began pulling fistfuls of long grass from the ground by the roots, gathering them in tufts and tossing them away, barely missing the grave of Heidi Petrelli, Nathan's wife. On her other side lay her two children and Mohinder thought of the pictures he had seen in the newspaper during the aftermath of the Petrelli family murder. School photos of two smiling boys in uniforms, both insets to a larger picture of a blood-spattered crime scene. On the next page, Peter standing stoic at the funeral, criticized by the press for being there at all when he was still considered a suspect in the case. 

"What about you?" Peter asked after a long moment, still ripping at the ground. "Does it fascinate you?"

Mohinder knew what Peter was asking. Mohinder was a scholar at heart, a geneticist who tended to see evolution on a grander, more scientific scale whereas Peter represented a much more personal, human side to the phenomenon. For Mohinder, it was all supposed to be about theories and research. While they had established Mohinder's belief that Peter was not a serial killer, they hadn't established whether Mohinder saw him as anything more than a research subject in this new context where they approached each other with secrets exposed for the first time. Perhaps Mohinder did loosely associate Peter with Sylar. Perhaps he was, on some level, afraid of what Peter could do. But when Peter looked at Mohinder, what he saw was the government and the torture it was willing to inflict on people like Claire and himself. 

Mohinder heard the real question and all that it implied. What he said was, "You would fascinate me even if you were the most ordinary of men." 

With a conscious effort, he opened himself and his thoughts so that Peter would be able to feel that it was true. Perhaps it was buried miles beneath all the other feelings he was having, but it was there and it was real. 

Peter dropped the grass he'd been holding but otherwise didn't react. 

"I feel it," he said after a pause. "What they do to Claire. Every time I go to sleep, I can feel all of it. Like it's happening to me." 

Mohinder thought of the screaming girl strapped to the table, one of the pictures Peter had drawn. Peter looked like he hadn't slept in days and Mohinder suspected he knew the reason why. 

"Go on," Mohinder said when Peter didn't continue. 

"But there's also this other thing I can't stop seeing. Something that doesn't have anything to do with my powers," Peter said. "Every time I close my eyes it's that day again and I'm there with Nathan's body. I mean, I found him and…" He cut himself off. "You know what that's like." 

"I do," Mohinder said. "And I understand from what Claude told me that not using your powers and staying away from the resistance is your way of honoring Nathan's wishes." 

Peter shook his head. "Nathan's dead, Mohinder," he said. "He doesn't have wishes anymore. I should know. I've been there." 

Mohinder barley suppressed a shudder at the thought. 

"I'm the one who took all that away from him." 

It would have been one thing if Peter said it with a crack in his voice. Some display of emotion. But the statement was matter-of-fact as if this was simply something Peter had thought about for a long time and this was the conclusion he'd come to. That disturbed Mohinder more than anything. 

Claude saved Mohinder from having to think of a response by throwing another rock that hit Peter's head just above his ear. A second quickly followed, hitting Mohinder on the back. 

"What the bloody hell are you two doing out there?" Claude shouted. "We haven't got all sodding day, have we?"

Mohinder raised an eyebrow. "I suppose he grows on you after you've known him a while," he said. 

"No," Peter said, a ghost of a smile on his lips. The same one Mohinder had seen when he'd cracked the joke about war wounds back when Peter was sick. "That's the thing, he really doesn't." 

Mohinder sighed. "He needs you," he said. "They need you. Claire needs you. If nothing else, you're delinquent on your rent. As am I, come to think of it. Where else do you really have to go right now?"

Peter frowned deeply. "Fuck," was all he said before lifting himself off the ground and making his way over to Claude, who immediately cuffed him upside the head. For Claude, this seemed an unusually affectionate display and Mohinder wondered at it as the three of them began the journey back to Isaac's loft, leaving the cemetery and Nathan Petrelli far behind. 

TBC


	13. Chapter 13

**A New Day at Midnight**

**Part 13/19**

"It's not the same without the pigeons, you know. The brooding, I mean."

Claude's voice came from behind Peter as he stood on the roof of Isaac's apartment building, staring down at the city below. He'd been there most of the morning, having slipped away in a rare moment of quiet while most of the others were still asleep. Peter had felt Claude watch him leave from some invisible, wide awake corner of the loft but it wasn't Claude's style to follow someone out of concern for their mental state. It was Peter's guess that if he was up here now, it was because he'd been sent against his will and against his better judgment.

Ignoring Claude's comment, Peter lifted one foot from the ledge and dangled it over the side like an uncertain swimmer testing the water before plunging in. Spreading his arms to keep his balance, he felt the wind currents pushing at him, adding a pronounced wobble to his already precarious pose. He knew if he used it the right way, the wind would support him. He could use it to fly.

"Want me to toss you over?" Claude asked, closer to Peter now as he returned his foot to its original position directly beneath his hip. Claude peered down at the street below. "I don't see any cabs down there. A few innocent bystanders, maybe. It could do the trick."

Peter shook his head. "I can't do it," he said. "Not since he died. Not since I saw him dead."

It used to be that when Peter attempted to access the power he'd absorbed from Nathan, he could do it by calling up one of the many images of his brother he had stored in his mind. Nathan proud and professional. Nathan relaxed and loose. Nathan stern and condescending. Nathan alive and vibrant. But those memories were lost to Peter now, along with the power they'd allowed him to access. All of it had been overshadowed by the feel of an unmoving body in Peter's arms, the sensation of drying blood on his clothes and hands.

"Don't suppose you're using your happy thoughts," Claude said. "Shame, I'm fresh out of fairy dust to sprinkle you with. Not that you need it, considering your boyfriend down there. All worried about you and pretending not to be. Isn't that sweet?" Claude pulled a face to show Peter exactly how sweet he thought Mohinder was.

"Funny, I thought it was my ex-boyfriend who was up here checking on me now," Peter retorted, tossing a glance at Claude over his shoulder.

Claude bristled. Even when they'd been together, he'd never exactly taken to being called Peter's boyfriend, though he seemed to have less of a problem with it when Peter was referred to as his. For the most part, their relationship had been one without labels or definitions, the one exception being the time Nathan had asked Claude about his intentions with Peter and Claude had answered by referring to Peter as his "fuck buddy." It went without saying that Claude, offended by Nathan's almost parental interrogation of him, was only trying to be shocking at the time but if there was a more accurate description for what they had together, they'd never found one. Not even for the sake of convenience.

"I'm not checking up on you," Claude replied, defensive. "I was only up here to tell you that Bennet's downstairs. He has news. If you're interested. You know, family meeting and all that."

Peter didn't relish the idea of facing Claire's adoptive father and their resident mole, but he wordlessly followed Claude anyway. Together, they joined the others, who were already gathered around a table that had been set up in a kind of makeshift war room, varying degrees of anxiety and grimness painted on everyone's faces. Even Hiro, who'd arrived just before Claude and Mohinder had brought Peter home, frowned with uncharacteristic worry, a far cry from the unmasked joy he'd displayed upon seeing Peter walk through the door the day before.

"Peter Petrelli!" he'd shouted, throwing his hands in the air and running up to Peter, hugging him briefly before pulling away, pushing his glasses up with one finger. His reaction alone had been enough to draw Isaac away from the painting he'd been working on. Matt also guiltily separated himself from Mohinder's confiscated laptop, where he'd been trying his hand at testing passwords. "So glad to see you are okay." Hiro bowed his head and Peter knew without asking that the Japanese time traveler was thinking of Nathan.

"I'm glad you're okay, too," Peter had said, slapping Hiro on the shoulder lightly. He knew Hiro had been especially fond of Nathan, though he'd only met Peter's brother a handful of times. If anyone could come close to understanding how Peter felt about Nathan's death, it was Hiro.

"Has anyone contacted Sanders and her family?" Bennet asked now, looking around the table.

Matt nodded, scratching his chin. "We sent word through the network that we're looking for them," he said. "My guess is that they're on their way."

Though Matt had been more than relieved at Peter's reappearance, the psychic feedback they sometimes accidentally bounced off one another gave the reunion a special awkwardness. By the time they'd finished their short, one-armed hug they were both rubbing their temples with burgeoning headaches. Still, Matt had managed to send Peter one exasperate if friendly thought, _Where the hell have you been, man?_

_I'm here now, _Peter had responded with a shrug.

Peter remembered the way Mohinder had watched this silent exchange, both avid and uneasy. He sat now at the opposite end of the table from Peter, looking slightly out of place. Officially, his captivity had ended the moment he'd helped bring Peter back. If Mohinder was with them now, it was more or less of his own free will so long as he didn't mind leaving without his computer. Peter wondered at this apparent conversion on the other man's part. If it was real and if the others had meant for it to happen or if it was just an interesting side effect of trying to get Peter back.

_I think he's here for you, man, _Matt sent to Peter, apparently picking up on his thoughts.

Peter felt his cheeks start to heat, but refused to blush.

_You should at least talk to the guy, _Matt continued when Peter didn't respond. _You've been avoiding him since, like, the minute you got here. Throw him a bone or something._

Peter shook his head. _It's not that easy, _he replied.

_Nothing is, _Matt sent back. _But look at it this way. We've already threatened him with the Haitian. He knows what'll happen if he tries to double cross us._

Peter cocked an eyebrow. _Oh, so you found the wind chimes while I was gone?_

Matt ducked his head, affecting a slightly ashamed look. _Not exactly, _he confessed. _But that's so not the point._

Peter smiled.

Before he could respond, Bennet cleared his throat, calling everyone's attention to the front of the room. He eyed Peter and Matt in particular, looking like a stern teacher who'd caught two students passing notes in class. Peter slid down in his seat a little while Matt hid a mischievous smile. Like giggling in the middle of a funeral, it was a strange time for even the most mild display of levity, but to Peter it just felt good to be interacting with his old friends again, even if the circumstances were grim.

"All right," Bennet said. "I don't have much time. First thing's first. I don't think I've had the pleasure of being introduced to your hostage." He turned to Mohinder, who straightened in his chair, caught off guard at being made the center of attention. "Mohinder Suresh, is that right? Chandra Suresh was your father?"

"Yes," Mohinder replied guardedly.

"You're the one with the computer file."

"Yes."

Bennet sighed, rubbing at his forehead. He turned to the table as a whole. "And exactly whose idea was it to bring him here without discussing it with me first?"

Matt and Isaac were quick to point at Claude.

"He thought I had Peter stuffed under the floorboards," Mohinder said in explanation, almost defending Claude.

"Of course he did," Bennet said with a long-suffering sigh. "You should know that your little stunt has the government suspicious. They've been looking for Suresh left and right. Fortunately, they had no idea about his relationship with Peter, otherwise the assumption would be betrayal rather than kidnapping and we'd really be in trouble."

"What do they think we'd want from Mohinder that we'd kidnap him?" Matt asked.

"A bargaining chip," Bennet said. "Mohinder and his encrypted file for the safe return of Claire."

Everyone sat up a little straighter. A murmur passed through the room.

"Forget it," Bennet said.

"Why?" Isaac said. "It's perfect. Like in those cop shows. We set up a time and a place to do the switch. They give us Claire, we give them Mohinder and that file."

"No," Bennet said. "It wouldn't work. Mohinder's not important enough to them. They wouldn't give up Claire just to keep him safe." He glanced at Mohinder. "Sorry."

Mohinder shrugged, seemingly unfazed. "I've suspected for some time that I was never that important to them," he said. "But my computer file is. Perhaps we could use that as a bargaining chip."

Again, Bennet shook his head. "Not without knowing what the file contains," he said. "You'd have to crack it first and then the information in it would have to be something of special importance before they'd even consider an exchange."

"No offense, but Claire's really that important to them?" Matt asked

Bennet sighed and seemed to sag. Exhaustion and worry radiated off him in waves and Peter and Matt weren't the only ones in the room who could feel it. Peter shifted in his chair, waiting for Bennet to give his answer.

"She is, but they're losing patience with her," Bennet said eventually. "For a while, they thought they'd found a way to transfer her healing ability to others. They did a few tests. Most of the people they tested on were able to heal minor cuts and other injuries but the more serious stuff didn't hold up. A few of the subjects were paralyzed or worse. Some are brain dead. Others were killed. Needless to say, they're not happy about it."

"Meaning exactly what?" Claude pressed.

"Meaning they're not going to keep Claire around much longer," Bennet said. "It's been months. They're not getting what they want from her." He cast a meaningful look at Peter. "She's not useful to them anymore."

"If she's not useful then why won't they accept an exchange?" Mohinder asked. "Even a mediocre one."

"They will accept an exchange," Peter answered before Bennet could. "It's just that the only exchange they'll accept is me."

The others looked to Bennet, who nodded solemnly.

"No," Claude and Mohinder said almost simultaneously. Claude added, "It ain't happening. Just forget it."

"It's the only way," Peter insisted.

"It's stupid," Claude retorted. "You give yourself up and the only thing that would be different is that we would have to rescue you instead of Claire."

"Claude's right," Matt said. "I kind of find it hard to believe that between us and our abilities we can't come up with some way to get Claire out of there without having to give up Peter."

"I'm confident my father's file would be enough to barter with," Mohinder put in. "If only you give me a little more time to figure out how to get past the encryption…"

"We don't have time," Peter said, cutting him off. "Like Bennet said, they're getting ready to kill Claire. We can't let that happen. If nothing else, exchanging me for her would at least buy time for you to figure out the file or a way past the security they have against us." The government may not have been able to figure out a way to duplicate special powers, but they had made a number of technological advances that made using such powers to get past security almost impossible.

"What happens if we're not that smart?" Claude said. "What happens if we don't get there in time and they kill you? Or worse, what if they figure out how to copy what you can do and then kill you? Did you ever think of that?"

Peter took a breath, letting it out slowly. "Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing," he said. "If they figured out how to do what I can do then they'd be able to take other people's powers without having to torture or kill them in the process."

"And what? They'd keep you around to teach classes on how to keep something like that under control?" Isaac said.

"They would kill us anyway," Hiro agreed, speaking for the first time. "Even if they do what you do."

"Dying permanently is pretty much the least of Claire's problems right now," Peter said. "Trust me. She's suffered long enough and I know that's partly my fault for not coming back sooner. But we need to get her out of there fast and letting me go is pretty much the only way to do it in the time that it needs to be done."

"Yeah, never mind the catastrophic possibilities. As usual," Claude said, getting up from the table so he could pace behind Peter. "I don't bloody care what happened to your brother. Making yourself into some kind of martyr is not going to undo anything."

_I just got you back. Don't do this._

Peter caught the stray, pained thought almost as if Claude had meant for him to hear it. Reeling a little, Peter could only look away as Claude tried to catch his eye. He caught Matt's eye instead and knew from the equally shocked look on the other man's face that he'd also overheard Claude's unexpected bout of sentimentality.

Composing himself by clearing his throat, Matt acted as the voice of reason. "I think Mohinder's plan is the best," he said. "We wait for him to decode his father's file. In the meantime, we try to think of some other way to get to Claire. If it looks like time's running out, then we'll use Peter idea as a last resort."

Bennet shook his head. "That's not good enough," he said. "We won't know time's running out until it's too late."

But the others were already resolved and moving away from the table. Peter and Bennet were the only ones who stayed in place. Mohinder lingered for a moment, glancing between the two of them before moving on. When he was sure no one was looking or listening in, Bennet sent Peter a strong, deliberate thought.

_You'll do it? You'll help Claire?_

Peter nodded, firm and unmistakable.


	14. Chapter 14

**A New Day at Midnight**

**Part 14/19**

The next morning when Peter was gone--truly gone and not just brooding on the roof or otherwise absent from visibility--Claude raged, Matt sighed and Hiro looked dejected but no one seemed surprised. Eyes filmed over with the power of his visions, Isaac simply returned to his latest work while the others gathered so they could redirect the exact goal of their rescue mission as they waited for word on Claire. Mohinder sat at his computer, pounding the keys with special brutality as he tried to force from its unyielding screen the answer he now needed so desperately to find if he hoped to get Peter back in one piece.

Of course, Mohinder couldn't be certain as to what getting Peter back would really mean. He only knew that when he'd confronted Peter in the cemetery, he'd done so believing that a more intimate reunion between them would not be possible or wise, especially considering all that he still didn't know about the real Peter. Unfortunately, his conviction had not lasted much past feeling Peter's arm brush accidentally against his as they walked together back to Isaac's loft. All it took to completely demolish his resolve was seeing the emotional reaction Peter's friends had when they saw him again for the first time after the better part of a year. He'd known then that the exact depth of what he felt for Peter transcended the obstacles that had been thrown between them--the fear, the lies, everything. The revelation was as frightening as it was exhilarating.

However, it appeared that Peter had no such similar revelations. In the short time they'd been in the loft together, Peter had kept a certain emotional and physical distance between them. Mohinder supposed it was possible that Peter's reticence was primarily rooted in his knowledge of what would be required of him in the mission to rescue Claire. If this was so, then Mohinder couldn't help but hold a kind of bitter admiration for Peter's foresight. As focused as he had been on coaxing Peter into his reluctant return, Mohinder had been blind to this latest twist until it was already upon them. And now Peter was gone again.

It seemed to Mohinder that he was beginning to understand some of the fear and exasperation that must have led Nathan Petrelli to beg his brother to live as a normal man. Why couldn't Peter have waited for a safer, simpler solution? Did he really doubt their ability to come up with one that much? Did he really doubt Mohinder?

Mohinder was pulled from the circling drain of his grim thoughts by the ringing of a phone, a sound that caused everyone in the funereally silent loft to jump at once before freezing in place, an almost comic tableau of tension. Mohinder counted six rings and was about to get up and answer the phone himself when the voice mail picked up and Bennet's voice crackled from the other end.

"It's me," he said. "I'm at the hospital. I'm with Claire." He gave an address and a room number and hung up.

Everyone exchanged looks. The moment should have been joyous. Instead, the atmosphere only seemed to become more dismal.

"I guess they have Peter," Matt said. "They agreed to the exchange."

"What if it's a trap?" Claude said. "We go to get her and they nab one of us instead."

"They have what they want," Matt said.

Claude cursed under his breath and seemed about to launch into a lecture about the inner workings of the government when Mohinder felt the urge to speak.

"I'll go," Mohinder said. "She won't know me but if it is some kind of trap, then they won't get what they want if I'm the only one there."

"Oh aye, and if they do catch you they'll take you to where Peter is and you can help him escape. How romantic," Claude said, rolling his eyes. "They wouldn't let you anywhere near Peter, mate. First they'd question you and then they'd kill you. End of story. You're nothing to them without that file. Hell, you're practically nothing to them with the damn thing."

"And what am I to you?" Mohinder bit back. "What am I that any of you would care so much if they did take me in and kill me?"

"You're the man who knows too much," Claude said. "Even if you didn't willingly answer their questions, they'd find a way to make you tell them. That's just how it is."

"But at least it wouldn't blow Bennet's cover," Matt said, interrupting the argument. At everyone's blank looks, he hurried to explain. "We're known enemies. If one of us walked in there and Bennet just handed her over they'd know something was up. But Mohinder's a civilian. They think he's our hostage. If we sent him, Bennet could report back that he didn't want to endanger Mohinder's life by not letting Claire go. Like maybe we'd threatened to kill Mohinder if he didn't do as we said. I mean, it won't win him any points, but at least it won't raise suspicion." Matt lifted his shoulders. "We can't lose Bennet. At least, not until we find someone to take his place."

"I still don't like it," Claude said.

Despite Claude's misgivings, it was only an hour later that Mohinder arrived at the hospital Bennet had named, carrying a small bouquet of flowers and a "Get Well" balloon with a puppy on it as cover. He located the nurse's desk and tried to make himself sound convincing as he asked to see a girl he'd never met. The nurse gave him the information easily enough, even supplying him with directions.

Mohinder found Claire's room easily and entered with a light knock. Inside, Mohinder found Bennet sitting hunched in a chair next to a bed occupied by a teenage girl with long blonde hair and a sullen expression. To Mohinder, she appeared wan and exhausted, but otherwise physically unharmed. This would have been a relief to him had it not been for the voice in the back of his head reminding him that she wasn't just any teenager. Of course there would be no physical traces of her captivity, given what she could do. With this in mind, he looked a little more closely and saw in her haunted eyes more definite signs of the trauma she'd endured before she turned her face away, choosing to look out the nearby window rather than at either of the men in her room.

Feeling ridiculous holding the flowers and balloon, Mohinder set both on a nearby table. He waited, trying to figure out what came next.

"I thought they might send you," Bennet said mildly by way of greeting.

"I'm not being accosted by hidden agents, so I'm assuming the precaution was unnecessary," Mohinder replied. He made a point of scanning the room, peering into every corner as if government employees could really disguise themselves as medical equipment. He saw no one.

"The arrangement was that Claire would be brought to a neutral location and released to my custody," Bennet said. "I think you'll find they've kept their word on this one."

Mohinder nodded. "I need to ask," he said. "Were you there? When he gave himself up?"

Bennet took his glasses off and began cleaning them with the tail of his uncharacteristically untucked shirt. He looked every bit the part of the worried father and it was Mohinder's guess that this was only partly an act. Returning the clean lenses to his face, Bennet said, "He asked that I be the one to take him to the facility. To turn him in."

"I might have guessed," Mohinder said.

"Yeah, Dad," Claire remarked from her bed. "Good move."

Bennet sighed, obviously affected by his daughter's anger. "What was I supposed to do, Claire?" he said.

Claire didn't answer. Mohinder saw in the thin line of her down-turned lips evidence of the internal conflict going on inside her. Relief at being out of danger at odds with the grief of knowing at what price her freedom had been bought.

Seeking to break the tension, Mohinder moved closer to Claire's bed and offered her his hand. "I don't believe we've met," he said. "My name is Mohinder Suresh. I'm a friend of Peter's."

Claire raised an eyebrow, shaking his hand without enthusiasm. "You're cute, I guess," she said, looking him up and down. For the first time, Mohinder noticed the slight drawl in her voice. "Not my type but I can see why Peter would like you. Besides, it's not like anything could be worse than Claude." She pulled a face. Mohinder might have laughed if not for his painfully burning cheeks.

Bennet rose from his chair. "I should be going," he said.

Whatever hostility Claire had been harboring toward her father melted away at this announcement. "Dad," she pleaded, reaching out for him.

Bennet bent and hugged her tightly. "You know how this works," he said. "I'll take you home right now if you want but we both know you won't be happy there."

Claire's breathing hitched and Mohinder found he couldn't look at her. Instead, he stepped out of the room, allowing them to have a more private good-bye.

A few minutes later, Bennet joined Mohinder in the hallway, pulling on his suit jacket. "She's just changing into the clothes I brought for her," he said. "She'll be out in a minute."

Mohinder nodded wordlessly.

"Normally I trust Peter to take care of her for me when I'm not able to do it myself, but since he's not in much of a position to do that now, I'm going to have to ask you to do it for him," Bennet said. He nodded toward the room. "She's a tough girl. But she's been through a lot."

"I understand," Mohinder said. "I'll do my best."

Bennet put a grateful hand on Mohinder's shoulder. In his expression, Mohinder could see that he had something he wanted to say and was trying to decide whether or not he should say it. Finally, he spoke:

"You probably won't want to hear this," he said, "but Peter told me to tell you he doesn't want anyone to try to rescue him. And I have to agree that doing so would be extremely dangerous, considering how hell-bent he is on punishing himself for what happened to his brother. You can't help someone who doesn't want to be saved."

Mohinder shook his head and was about to protest but Bennet cut him off.

"But then again, I know how I felt when Claire was the one in danger. Considering your relationship with Peter, I can only imagine how little asking you not to come after him is going to do to stop you," Bennet went on. "I wanted to let you know I'll do what I can to protect Peter while he's in there. And for what it's worth, I think the computer file that belonged to your father is your best bet at this point if you want to get Peter out."

"I thought you said it was worthless," Mohinder said.

"It was," Bennet said. "Claire would have been dead before you cracked the thing. But Peter's bought you a little time." He lifted his shoulders. "I don't know. The information might not be of any value. Then again, I've seen your father's research and I have a hard time believing he would have gone to such great pains to hide something if it really was worthless."

"But what if it isn't enough?" Mohinder asked.

Bennet sighed. "You'll have to find a way to make it enough," he said. "That is, if you want to see Peter again."

Mohinder nodded. "I understand," he said.

"Good," Bennet said.

He clapped Mohinder on the shoulder one more time before making his way toward the exit. Mohinder watched him go: step brisk, shoulders squared, he was the picture of stoicism. Claire, on the other hand, still had tear streaks drying on her face when Mohinder stepped back into her room. Still, she was able to lift her chin to him, determination in her eyes.

"So are we breaking out of this place or what?"


	15. Chapter 15

**A New Day at Midnight**

**Part 15/19**

"So, is that your power?" Claire asked with a wryly raised eyebrow from the couch where she'd been resting on and off since her return to the loft three days earlier. "You, like, worry all the time or something?"

Mohinder looked up from his laptop, which he'd had balanced in his lap. Eyes blurry from staring at the screen, he rubbed at them a moment before focusing on Claire and her abrupt question. "Sorry?" he said.

She sat up, adjusting her blankets around her, smoothing the wrinkles from the thick material. "I've been trying to figure it out since I met you," she said. "At first I thought it had something to do with computers since you're attached at the hip to that thing but if that was true you would have figured out that password by now. Then I started thinking maybe you had this thing where you could go for days without food or water but then Matt gave you that whole lecture about how you should eat something before you made yourself sick, so that couldn't be it." She gave Mohinder a shrewd look. "The only other thing I've seen you do is sit and worry. You worry about me because my father told you to. You worry about Peter. But that doesn't seem like much of a power." She folded her arms. "So what is it? What can you do?"

For a moment, all Mohinder could do was open and close his mouth several times, the ability to form words having escaped him as he realized what it was Claire was asking him. All things considered, Claire's assumption was a natural one but to be so casually and easily mistaken for one of Them was a jarring experience for Mohinder, made even more so by the fact that he'd begun to forget to think of himself as being separate from the people who now surrounded him. He'd forgotten that he was the stranger in this place.

"If it's really embarrassing, you don't have to tell me," Claire said, sensing his hesitancy.

"It's not that," Mohinder said. "It's just that I'm…That is, I have no ability."

Now both of Claire's thin eyebrows climbed upward in an expression of open surprise. "But you're helping us," she said.

"So is Bennet," Mohinder pointed out. "He has no ability."

"That's different," Claire said. "He has me."

"I have Peter," Mohinder replied.

Claire grinned. "Aww," she said.

Mohinder concentrated on the screen in front of him, fighting a blush.

"How did you and Peter meet?" Claire asked.

"Do you find your interest in your own uncle's love life at all disturbing?" Mohinder asked, hoping to discourage her from further questioning.

"Not as much as the fact that he's my uncle in the first place," Claire said, making a face. "Besides, it's not like I have anything else to do. It's not like they're letting me help them get Peter back." She shot a look in the direction of Matt and the others. They'd gathered as usual in the makeshift war room but were more silent than usual. It seemed they were empty of ideas.

In truth, there was nothing the others were more desperate for than Claire's help in the mission to rescue Peter. As someone who'd been on the inside, her knowledge of where she'd been and what had been done to her was their best resource--their best way of knowing what they were truly up against. Claire was eager to share her memories but every time she tried, she would be consumed by the rawness of her experiences, subsequently retreating into a gray silence or dissolving into helpless tears. Her own emotion frustrated and upset her but the recovery process couldn't be rushed. The others did what they could to respect her limitations even as the direness of the situation grew more apparent to them through her reactions.

Her interrogation of Mohinder was, if nothing else, a way to avoid being overwhelmed by her own feelings of uselessness. As someone who'd begun relying on the law of random chance to figure out the password to a simple computer file, Mohinder could sympathize.

"The first time I saw Peter he'd lost his balance on a flight of stairs and was sprawled at the bottom of them," Mohinder said.

"Did you think he was cute?"

"I thought he was an ass," Mohinder said.

Claire smiled. "I thought he was cute the first time I saw him," she said. "Actually, more like the second time because the first time I saw him a girl I knew was being killed by the trophy case in the school hallway during homecoming and I thought we were next." She shuddered at the memory. "That was before…you know. Before I knew his brother was my real dad." Another shudder.

"I see," Mohinder said. "And that night you met…was that how you and your father became involved in the resistance?"

"Sort of," Claire said. "After my father found out what I could do, I ran away to New York trying to find Peter. He'd told me about the resistance here. How to find the loft. It was all just starting up back then but he told me there were people here who could protect me, including him. My dad pretty much freaked and eventually he kind of came after me. But by then he had a better idea of exactly what the government was doing to people like me and why. I mean, he already kind of knew but I guess it was different when it was his own daughter. So he offered to help us and that's what we've been doing ever since." She lifted her chin slightly, in both pride and defiance.

"It's a very brave thing," Mohinder said.

"It's the right thing," Claire replied.

Before Mohinder had a chance to reply, a light knock came from behind Isaac's door, startling them all. Mohinder rose from his chair, looking toward Matt, who listened with brow furrowed to the thoughts of the person on the other side. At his nod, Mohinder went to the door and opened it to find a tall blonde woman standing before him, a young boy at her side.

"Hello," he said awkwardly.

"Oh God, do I have the wrong place?" the woman said, glancing between the number on Isaac's door and a number she'd written down on a piece of scrap paper.

"No, Niki, we're in here," Matt called, standing.

The woman looked relieved and stepped past Mohinder inside the loft, the boy trailing behind her. Finding themselves surrounded by Isaac's paintings, the woman and her son looked around in wonderment and open curiosity. They were both drawn to one painting in particular, which showed a blonde woman smirking in profile. Walking up to it, the boy commented with a giggle,

"You look like a comic book, Mom."

The woman rolled her eyes at her son, but said nothing. Matt approached the pair from the side, sticking out his hand in greeting. The woman took it and they shook, friendly but formal. A business relationship rather than a friendship.

"You are Niki, right?" Matt asked apprehensively, inexplicably.

The woman arched an eyebrow in response. Seeming to sense the discomfort caused by her non-answer, the boy gave Matt a secret nod and everyone seemed to relax by a few degrees, now moving in to openly greet the new arrival.

"Like a bloody family reunion, this," Claude muttered, resisting when the boy tried to hug him. "Should I get my camera?"

"Sure, I think you put it with the wind chimes," Niki remarked. She turned to Mohinder, who was still standing awkwardly at the door. "You I don't know," she said, tilting her head to the side.

"This is Mohinder Suresh," Matt said. "He's a friend of Peter's."

"Oh," Niki said, perhaps a little too knowingly. "Okay." She moved forward, offering her hand to Mohinder. He took it in his own for a loose shake. "I'm Niki Sanders. This is my son, Micah."

"Good to meet you," Mohinder said. "You're also a friend of Peter's?"

"Sort of," Niki said. "I knew his brother. Nathan. We, uh, met once in Las Vegas."

"Ah," Mohinder said, sensing from her tone that there was a story behind this meeting. One there was no time to tell.

While the others gathered around to fill Niki in on the developments that had taken place over the past few days, Mohinder took the opportunity to return to his work, such as it was. Giving in to the law of random chance had begun to mean typing in as much nonsense as possible and trusting that the correct answer would reveal itself eventually. So far, he'd had no luck and if the others were beginning to lose faith in his ability to solve the password, he could hardly blame them. The weight of his own failure seemed to come down on him more heavily with each wrong entry.

Lost in thought, he didn't notice anyone standing at his shoulder until Micah spoke.

"What are you doing?" the boy asked skeptically, looking at the jumble of meaningless symbols scrawling across the screen in front of Mohinder.

"I'm trying to figure out a password," Mohinder said.

"By just hitting random keys?" Micah asked, raising his eyebrows. "Did you forget it or something?"

"No," Mohinder said. "I never knew it. The file was my father's. It might contain information that could help us free Peter."

"Oh," the boy said, clearly unimpressed. "You wore off most of the letters on your keyboard."

"I know," Mohinder said with a sigh. "I've been doing this a very long time."

"That's kind of dumb," Micah said with the kind of brutal honesty that only children could get away with. Still, Mohinder couldn't disagree. "Can I try?"

At this point, Mohinder was willing to allow a group of trained chimps to take his place if he thought their chances of finding the password would be any better than his own. Wearily, he moved to the side and allowed Micah to take over his chair in front of the computer. Micah sat on the very edge of it, his feet barely touching the floor, his hands resting motionless atop the keys. For a moment, he stared at the screen, watching the coded information as it scrolled in front of him. His brow furrowed tightly.

Then, without his fingers moving, a series of x's representing a protected password appeared in the appropriate box on the screen. A moment later, the monitor clicked to life and the nonsense Mohinder had been staring at for more than a year began snapping into place line by line, forming actual words and actual numbers. Mohinder's eyes widened, his jaw fell open as he watched coherency emerge from the nothingness. Just like that.

Completely undisturbed by what he'd just done, Micah peered at the screen before him. "What is this?" he said, scrolling up and down the list that had appeared, scanning it quickly. "Hey, I'm on here. So's my mom."

Indeed, all the names were there, not just Micah and Niki Sanders. There was also Matt Parkman. Hiro Nakamura. Claire Bennet. Isaac Mendez. Nathan Petrelli.

Peter Petrelli.

All of them and more.

"My God," Mohinder breathed. Then, because he couldn't think of anything else to add, he repeated it: "My God."

"What's going on, baby?" Niki said, coming up to rest her hands on Micah's shoulders as he sat with Mohinder at the computer. "What's this?" She bent down to take a closer look, seeming to easily spot her own name among all the others.

"It's a list," Micah said. "Names and addresses. Phone numbers."

By then, the others had gathered around, all of them wanting a closer look at what Mohinder and Micah had discovered.

"I don't understand," she said.

Around the swell in his own throat, Mohinder attempted to answer. "My father," he began. "He did it. He came up with a way to trace the effects of evolution. A formula that helps locate people with special abilities. It's…extraordinary." He took over the mouse, scrolling up and down the list, examining each name as he went.

"Why would he have something like that?" Matt asked. "Was he trying to help the government?"

Mohinder shook his head. "Not at all," he said. "He wanted to help people like you. I'm sure of it. That's probably why he hid it. So it wouldn't fall into the wrong hands." The realization came to him only as he said it aloud. "So Sylar wouldn't be able to find others and kill them for their powers."

"So Sylar killed him instead," Isaac guessed.

"Yes," Mohinder said. "He was trying to protect others." He turned to Micah. "But how did you do it? How did you guess the password?"

Suddenly, Peter's voice echoed in his mind. _There's this kid I know of who would probably have that cracked in five seconds flat…And he's only, like, ten or something. It's crazy. _He'd said it a lifetime ago as they'd wandered through the afterglow of their new relationship. Moments later, Peter had admitted, _I want this. No matter what, I want this._

"The computer told me," Micah replied as if this were the most normal thing in the world.

"What the hell was it anyway?" Isaac asked.

"Yes, what was the password?" Mohinder asked.

Micah shrugged. "It was weird," he said.

"I would hope so if this one spent a whole year trying to figure it out," Claude said.

"I think it was a name," Micah said, ignoring Claude.

"What name?" Mohinder pressed.

"Shanti," Micah replied. "It was Shanti."

TBC


	16. Chapter 16

**A New Day at Midnight**

**Part 16/19**

_I feel compelled to include a warning here that this chapter contains potentially disturbing references to violent images. Read with caution._

The tests started off easy, minimally invasive. They asked for samples of Peter's blood and he gave it willingly. Then they wanted samples of other bodily fluids--saliva and otherwise--and he let them take those too. They did scans, they hooked him up to monitors, they wrote things down on clipboards. It wasn't pleasant, but there was a civility to the process Peter hadn't been expecting when he'd asked Bennet to take him in. The false sense of security he was lulled into was sufficient enough that when a nameless man in a white lab coat informed him they wanted to begin some of the more complicated tests by comparing his healing abilities to Claire's, he only nodded and let himself be strapped to a table underneath a pool of bright light in an otherwise dark room.

He wasn't sure what they were expecting from him as they scraped and punctured his skin at ever deeper levels with various sharp instruments. Whatever it was, they seemed genuinely surprised every time he grunted or cried out. It was almost as though, despite their experience with Claire, they thought an ability to heal also came with an immunity to pain.

But the knowledge of the torment they were causing didn't stop them. In fact, their efforts only escalated until they had built up to systematically breaking each of his bones so that they could watch them mend--one at a time, two at a time. By the time they reached this stage, his voice had exhausted itself into an ineffectual, hoarse rush of air that did nothing to convey his agony. Blind with pain, unable to move, reaching out with his mind was more of a reflex than a conscious action. Peter didn't even realize he had pinned each of the doctors forcefully against the walls until he opened his eyes and saw them there, terror and shock written on their faces as they struggled against him. With effort, he released them from his hold and they all dropped to the ground at once.

After that, they started using sedatives on him, not seeming to care how such a strategy skewed their test results. It didn't matter to them if Peter was slow in healing injuries he couldn't feel or that the delay with which he responded to the thoughts of others made his replies sound like stunning non sequiturs. They weren't about to take any chances.

For his part, Peter lost track of everything, especially time and reality. Trapped alone in his cell for long periods of time, he began to hallucinate. It started as an intentional delusion on his part, a construction of dreams and memories he could retreat to when needed. Nathan featured heavily in most of these foggy remembrances, connected as they were in a loose game of association.

First he saw himself on a swing set as a kid, Nathan as a teenager sitting on a nearby park bench, a happy moment spoiled only by the fact that Nathan insisted Peter swing higher under his own power rather than giving into Peter's demands to be pushed. Then he saw himself on a similar swing set as an adult, racing Nathan's kids to see who could go the highest while Nathan sat on a similar bench, cell phone to his ear. Focused as he was on the business at hand, he still kept a careful eye on them all, not quite trusting Peter to know how high was too high.

He thought about Nathan's accident. That surge of terrible knowledge that had him sitting bolt upright in bed, gasping for air. The haunted guilt in Nathan's eyes as they sat together in the hospital, waiting for news of Heidi. The first burst of power in each of them on the same night while in the background a news anchor announced from a television in the corner that, following public outcry, the government was taking new measures to contain the recent outbreaks of violence believed to be perpetrated by people with special abilities.

Then there had been his own trip to the hospital--the first one, after he'd launched himself off the roof to prove he could fly while Nathan watched from the ground below. The stern lines of censure framing Nathan's mouth as he fought to convince Peter and the world that what Peter had meant to do that day was fall. That he'd wanted to die.

A fight. "I don't understand, Nathan. When did you get like this? When did you make the decision to turn against your own people?"

"They're not my people, Peter," Nathan had snapped. "My people are Heidi and the boys and you. Heidi nearly died and I watched it happen from fifty feet above the ground."

"You would have died in that car crash if it hadn't been for your powers," Peter bit back. "How is that better?"

"I don't know," Nathan said. "All I know is that they're passing a law that makes the use of special abilities illegal and I'm not sad about it. In fact, I'm going to do everything I can to support it. And you would be smart to do the same."

A week later Peter had been in the hospital again, his own powers betraying him and overwhelming his body. Looking back even through the haze of whatever they were doping him up with now, he knew that if there was ever a moment when he might have done as Nathan had asked while Nathan was still alive, that would have been it. Instead, he'd taken his damaged confidence and found Claude. Claude who screamed at him, threw things at him as they danced around the roof of a building. Claude who wanted him to use his abilities badly enough that he threw Peter over the side of the building to get him to do it.

The thrill of falling, the thrill of being lifted up as one memory shifted into another and now he saw himself with his back against the wall, fingers tangled in Claude's hair as they rubbed against one another with the same kind of violent abandon that had characterized their training sessions. The exact, undiplomatic, undisguised horror on Nathan's face when he walked in on them. Rather than allowing Peter to pull away in mortification, Claude had held Peter in place until they finished, Nathan watching the entire time.

Afterward, Peter remembered wondering if his healing ability extended to dying of embarrassment. Maybe they could test for that in this place if they didn't kill him first. The way they'd killed Nathan.

Peter didn't know why the intuition that connected him to Nathan had failed him that day. Or maybe he'd just subconsciously blinded himself to what it was trying to tell him. Whatever the reason, he remembered how he'd arrived at Nathan's house with no idea what he was about to walk into until it was too late to turn back.

He'd found Heidi and the kids first--all in their pajamas in the living room at the front of the house. It wasn't until later that Peter pieced together what must have happened: that the government agents had executed them one by one. The kids first. Heidi last. All while Nathan was made to watch, an invitation to give Peter up extended to him between each death. Heidi must have begged Nathan to save her children's lives, to exchange Peter for their sons. Even now, Peter didn't know why Nathan hadn't done it.

Nathan was in the study upstairs, slumped over against a far wall behind the desk. The room had been ransacked as if, out of options, they'd expected to find some kind of address and phone number for Peter among Nathan's things. But by then Peter had been spending all his time with the others in Isaac's loft, his contact with Nathan minimal. Any incriminating information they might have found among Nathan's things would have been outdated at best. There was nothing there that could have saved Nathan except Nathan.

At first, Peter had wandered through the debris, unable to approach his brother's body. That was when he'd found the framed photo of himself at eighteen in that stupid cap and gown, Nathan standing beside him. Shaking, he'd tried desperately to wipe away the spattered blood that covered it with his sleeve, but to no avail. Useless or not, he was so absorbed in his futile task that he almost missed it. In a way, he wished he had missed that gurgling groan that came from the man lying on the floor, staring up at him with nakedly frightened eyes, a shell of his brother.

"Nathan?" Peter remembered saying, instantly on his knees, his brother's body cradled in his lap. "Nathan, can you hear me?"

But it was obvious Nathan couldn't answer, so instead Peter had reached out with his mind. He was met with nothing but indescribable turmoil. There was not a single coherent thought left in Nathan's mind as he faced his end. He wasn't thinking of something stupid like whether he'd remembered to turn the stove off or something profound like how much he loved those he was leaving behind. His thoughts were a static from which Peter could draw no poetry or comfort. And Nathan could draw no comfort from him. He probably wasn't even aware that Peter was there, crying over him and muttering endless, soothing nonsense as Nathan died.

It took thirty agonizing minutes for it to be over. Another few hours sitting with the body before Peter had emerged from quiet hysteria long enough to tell someone what had happened. Before anyone arrived, he'd slipped that forgotten picture out of its ruined frame and stuck it in his pocket. It was the only thing of Nathan's he'd taken, placing it in a frame of his own as if Nathan might come back for it someday.

Of course, the new frame had been destroyed the day he'd introduced himself to Mohinder by falling down the stairs in their apartment building. Maybe Nathan hadn't thought about stupid, inconsequential things in his dying moments, but floating as he was at what might very well turn out to be the end of his own life, it occurred to Peter that he'd never gotten around to replacing the frame after it had been broken a second time.

Which was probably why when Nathan showed up in Peter's cell, there was something a little cracked about his appearance. Like shards of a mirror that hadn't been lined up properly in a shoddy repair process, there was something about him that didn't quite seem to fit together.

He didn't speak. Maybe hallucinations weren't supposed to. Peter didn't know. Either way, Nathan simply stood in a corner of the room and stared at Peter with an unreadable look in his shadowed eyes. Most of the time, Peter could barely summon the energy to simply stare back, but on one occasion he actually managed to reach out with his mind, wanting to know what his brother was thinking. He was met with nothing besides his own slurred thoughts and the echoing silence of his solitude. It occurred to Peter that summoning the dead was a power he had yet to encounter.

Still, if Nathan really were there, dressed as he was in the rolled up shirt sleeves and suit pants of his hectic politician days and if he really were looking at Peter like that, Peter wondered what he would be thinking. Would he be disappointed to learn that his sacrifice had earned him little more than a wasted, aimless year of Peter's life? Had the lives of his family really been worth Peter ending up in this place?

What would he think of Mohinder?

It went without saying that Nathan had never liked Claude. Peter had never asked him to. On the more general subject of Peter's sexual orientation, Nathan was more resigned than accepting. He neither approved or disapproved of Peter's choices in partners. He also never expressly gave or withheld his blessing when it came to the men Peter occasionally dated. Maybe he'd believed it was something Peter would grow out of. That he hadn't really loved any of the men he had been with.

Whether or not this was true, Peter couldn't keep himself from admitting in his drug-induced haze that Mohinder was different.

He tried to picture what it would be like to have Nathan and Mohinder in a room together. Somehow, he doubted that they would get along. But even if he didn't like him, Mohinder was the kind of person Nathan could respect, however grudgingly. They would be formidable and worthy opponents and Peter took a strange comfort in knowing this.

So lost was he in his reveries that he didn't notice right away when Nathan's apparition was joined by Mohinder's. The two hallucinations seemed to exist separately, unaware of one another as they kept their silent watch over Peter. He wanted to talk to them, even if they didn't talk back, but was unable to form anything better than a confused garble of sounds indistinguishable as words. Just as well. He had no idea what he was trying to say anyway. It appeared they had nothing to say to him.

Except that one day they did. One day, Peter blinked awake to find himself staring directly into Mohinder's dark eyes. Slowly, it registered that something was different. More than the weight of imaginary gazes, he felt the buzz of emotions and thoughts of another person--a real person. And then, for the first time since he'd begun appearing in Peter's cell, Mohinder spoke. His lips didn't form any words, but Peter heard that familiar soft voice all the same.

Inside his head, it said, _Peter? Can you hear me?_


	17. Chapter 17

**A New Day at Midnight**

**Part 17/19**

The plan wasn't a good one. They didn't need Bennet's dubiously raised eyebrows to tell them that. It wasn't good, but it was relatively simple in the way most half-formed plans tended to be and a more diplomatic person might have called it flexible, saying that it left room for improvisation, if necessary.

It quickly became obvious that Bennet was in no mood to be diplomatic.

"It has holes you could drive a truck through," he said.

"Dad--" Claire began, trying to reason with him.

"It's idiotic," he added in case he hadn't gotten his point across the first time.

"It's what we have," Matt said, rubbing his face with the palms of his hands and letting out an exhausted sigh. "Look at it this way, they already think Mohinder is our hostage. Why not use that?"

The story that they'd come up with was that Mohinder would go to the government facility where they were keeping Peter saying he'd found a way to escape his captors. Afraid of retaliation on the part of the resistance, he would ask for the government's protection in exchange for his father's list, a fake that had been manufactured to resemble the real one enough to suit their purposes.

"What makes you think the government is going to be in any way interested in protecting Mohinder?" Bennet said. "Once they get the file from him--or what they think is the file--he won't be useful to them anymore. They won't have a reason to keep him around."

"No," Hiro said firmly. "They will want to know about us. They will ask questions."

_First they'd question you and then they'd kill you. _Claude's warning from when Mohinder had volunteered to retrieve Claire echoed through Mohinder's mind, but he allowed the conversation to continue without comment.

"Hiro's right," Isaac said. "They'd interrogate Mohinder first. I mean, he's seen where we live. He's seen us interact. Wouldn't they want to find out what he knows about how we work?"

"They'll get him to tell them all of that either way and the result will be the same," Bennet said. "Frankly, I don't understand why you're not just trading the real file for Peter. There's a chance something like that would work and the risk would be much less."

"Yeah, except there's also a chance it wouldn't work," Niki remarked. "And oh yeah, they'd have the names, addresses and phone numbers of even more people they could locate and torture."

"Peter wouldn't want that," Matt said.

"Then how are you going to ensure that they don't figure out the file you're giving them is a fake?" Bennet replied. "With something that important, they'll want to verify that it's real before going any further."

"That's where I come in," Claude said. He'd kept himself uncharacteristically removed from the proceedings thus far, choosing to stand to the side rather than sit at the table with the rest of them. "I used to work for the government. They know my real name, even if they never used it. Far as they know, this lot here doesn't even know I'm working under an alias. Which is pretty stupid, really. Claude Raines. The invisible man. Thought it was pretty clever myself."

"Yeah, yeah. Shows what we know about old, obscure movies. We get it," Matt said, waving Claude off.

"So what you're telling me is that the government will somehow assume that you didn't think to ask Claude what his real name is and once they see it on that list, that that will automatically confirm its authenticity in their eyes," Bennet said, hiding none of his skepticism. "Along with all your own real names, I assume."

"No risk in letting them see those if they already know about us," Niki put in.

"You realize that including Claude's real name on that list will only prove to them just how outdated the thing is in the first place," Bennet said.

"So?" Niki replied. "It's still information they'll think we don't have. They'll still see it as something they can use to stay a step ahead of us." She shook her head. "I don't think it'll matter that the list is old. The real one is old and there's still plenty of people on there that weren't killed by the government or Sylar."

"Not to mention they might be able to study it and figure out what formula Mohinder's dad used to get those names in the first place," Isaac added.

"Look," Matt said, "the fake list idea isn't perfect. We know that. But we can't give them the real one and if we tried to exchange a fake one for Peter, they'd find us out in a heartbeat. As it is, Mohinder's not asking for that much. Just protection from us that they're under no obligation to actually give and five minutes alone with Peter. At a price as small as that one, they're less likely to be concerned whether or not the list is real. They won't look at it as closely."

"Wait, five minutes alone with Peter?" Bennet said.

Everyone nodded.

"How exactly do you plan to pull that one off?"

"Peter betrayed me," Mohinder said, speaking for the first time. "Just like Sylar betrayed my father. I'll want time alone to confront him before the government makes me disappear."

"With you as the guard outside the room, since you're the only one Mohinder trusts after seeing you in the hospital with Claire that day," Matt added.

"How convenient," Bennet remarked.

"Once Mohinder's alone with Peter, he can communicate what's going on with his thoughts so they're not overheard," Matt continued. "They can stage a fight. Pretend like Peter overpowers Mohinder and takes you as a hostage to get himself out of the building." He raised an eyebrow. "You're important enough to them that they'd care if you died, right?"

Claire shifted uncomfortably.

Bennet sighed. "Let's hope so," he said.

"Of course, there will be a team of us outside ready to storm the place in case anything goes wrong," Claude added as if this were only natural. "Going out in a blaze of glory and all that since we'd be pretty much fucked if it came to that."

A moment passed.

Bennet turned to Mohinder. "What do you think?" he said.

In all honesty, Mohinder wasn't sure what he thought. But he did it anyway. Staging a fake escape from the people who'd supposedly held him hostage, he met Bennet at an obscure gas station in a part of the city he'd never heard of. Riding in the car with him to the facility where Peter was being kept, he couldn't help but ask what he hadn't been able to in the presence of the others, afraid of the answer he would get.

"How is he?"

Bennet concentrated on the road. "I haven't seen him since I brought him in," he admitted. "I figured it was less suspicious if I stayed away. But I did hear about an incident where he got violent with some of the scientists working with him. A few people got hurt. They had to subdue him."

"My God," Mohinder murmured, hating to think what "subdue" meant in this context. Still, it gave him hope to hear that Peter was fighting back. That he wasn't simply allowing them to steal the secrets of his genetic code to use as a weapon against innocent people. That had to mean something.

"I'm curious," Bennet said after a moment of silence. "All this time you've been working and you've never come up with that password. Then this kid comes along and solves it for you."

"Yes," Mohinder said, not adding that the so-called kid had had something of an unfair advantage in that arena.

"So, I have to ask. What was it? What was the password?"

Strangely, Mohinder was still asking himself this same question. His father had used a woman's name to protect his most precious document and the people it listed. The name, as far as Mohinder knew, belonged to none of the women in his family or any close friends. Was it possible his father had been having a secret affair? Mohinder couldn't imagine that there could be any other explanation.

Still, he wasn't about to share all of this with Bennet.

"Pardon me if I'm not entirely convinced that giving the password to you would be the wisest decision," he said. "Mole or not, you still work for the government."

Bennet smiled. "Fair enough," he said.

"Suffice to say, it was a name," Mohinder said. "A woman's name. I didn't recognize it."

Bennet's smile dropped off his face immediately. "Shanti," he said.

Mohinder felt a wave of shock pass through him. Carefully, he asked, "How do you know that name?"

"Your father's research," he said.

"I thought my father's research was classified after his death," Mohinder said.

"It was," Bennet replied. "I have clearance to view it. After what happened with Claire running away to New York, I began to look through it just to see if I could…better understand what was happening to my daughter." He paused. "That name came up a lot. Shanti."

"Who was she?" Mohinder said. "What do you know about her?"

Bennet opened his mouth as if to answer and then closed it again. After a minute, he said, "I just can't believe that's what it was. After all this time." He shook his head. "I should have known."

They didn't get a chance to discuss the subject further before Bennet pulled the car through the gates of the anonymous medical research facility that was their destination. Feeling the enormity of what he was about to do begin to weigh upon him, Mohinder glanced in the rearview mirror outside his window, searching for some sign of the others at their posts, ready to move if something went wrong. But they were hidden well and the illusion that he was alone settled inside him as a reality.

Suddenly businesslike, Bennet briskly led Mohinder inside the perfectly nondescript building where they were greeted first by an office-like atmosphere, complete with a deceptively cheerful receptionist stationed at a desk in front.

Approaching her, Bennet said, "I need to see Thompson. Right away."

"Do you have an appointment?" the young woman asked, arching an eyebrow.

"This is important," Bennet replied, condescending. "Tell him Mohinder Suresh wants to speak with him."

The woman eyed Mohinder warily before picking up the phone at her side. Mohinder had little idea of Bennet's rank among those he worked with but he had enough sway that when the receptionist mentioned both his name and Mohinder's, they were admitted right away. Apparently a space had opened up in Thompson's schedule.

Beyond the front desk, the illusion of a legitimate medical facility gradually faded away until Mohinder found himself walking through a part of the building that looked like it was little more than a renovated warehouse populated for the most part by men and women wearing stiff suits and serious expressions as they moved between empty, poorly lit rooms, studying computer screens and talking in hushed voices. White lab coats showed a poor representation for a supposed hospital-like setting. One of the few men Mohinder saw wearing one was covered in someone else's blood, all down his front. Mohinder lost a breath at the sight, his heart racing at an impossible speed.

Thompson turned out to be a gray-haired man who occupied an office at the back of the building. He stood when they entered, shaking their hands in a firm, businesslike grip before affecting a more casual stance.

"Mohinder Suresh," he said with a toothy grin. "So glad to finally meet you in person. Please sit." He indicated a pair of chairs that had been set up in front of his desk. While Mohinder perched himself on the edge of his own chair, Bennet moved to close the door behind him. Across the desk, Thompson steepled his fingers and gave Mohinder a musing look. "I understand you've been through quite the ordeal these past few weeks. Taken hostage by the resistance."

"I have," Mohinder acknowledged. "They sent Peter Petrelli in to gain my trust and then accosted me in my apartment. Strangely enough, I had the idea that the government was doing all it could to protect me and my work, Mr. Thompson. I suppose I must have been wrong."

Thompson spread his hands. "Petrelli is one of the most wanted men in the world, Dr. Suresh," he said. "Had we known he'd been in contact with you in any way, we would have taken immediate action. As it is, I'm sorry for what you've had to endure. You're right. We should have been keeping a closer watch but we had no reason to believe the resistance was a danger to you. We became lax. I apologize."

Mohinder made a non-committal sound and made a show of examining his fingernails. "Lucky for you, I have a way you can make it up to me," he said, returning his attention to Thomspon.

"Oh?" Thompson said, barely concealing his amusement.

Mohinder held up the portable hard drive he'd been carrying. "While they held me captive they had me work on my father's file. They wanted the information it contained," he said.

Thompson leaned forward. "And?"

"And I cracked it," Mohinder said.

Thompson's eyes widened. Beside Mohinder, Bennet shifted.

"Well?" Thompson said when Mohinder didn't go on. "What does it contain?"

"It's a list," Mohinder said, somewhat enjoying the drama he was creating. "Names. Addresses. Phone numbers. Everyone on there is someone with a special ability."

"Interesting," Thompson commented. "Did they see it?"

"No," Mohinder said. "Once I realized what I had, I hid it and began planning my escape. They were so focused on rescuing Petrelli they didn't notice anything. Not even the mind reader."

Thompson nodded.

"And you think this list might be useful to us?"

"The list is outdated," Mohinder admitted. "I'm not even certain it's accurate. It's certainly not complete. For example, there's no person named Claude Raines on it anywhere. But I believe it has value. Especially if you're able to extract the formula my father used in order to come up with those names in the first place."

"All right," Thompson said. "And what if this list is important enough to warrant some kind of exchange? What is it I'd be giving you, Dr. Suresh?"

"Two things," Mohinder said. "The first is protection from the resistance. Give me a new name, a new life. Anything so that they don't find me again."

"And the second?"

"Alone time with Peter Petrelli," he said. "Five minutes of it. Just so I can enjoy seeing the bastard suffer for what he did to me." He heard the vitriol in his own voice and with sudden clarity knew how close he'd been to actually becoming the person he was pretending to be following Peter's betrayal. How easily the pieces could have fallen a different way.

Thompson gave him a measuring look. "What if I told you we shouldn't have to give you anything in return for this list?" he said. "What if I said it's your civic responsibility to give it to us and that negotiation of any kind is out of the question?"

"I'd say portable hard drives are easy to break," Mohinder replied.

"You'd be committing a crime worthy of spending the rest of your life in prison," Thompson pointed out.

"Perhaps," Mohinder said with a nonchalance he didn't feel. "But I think in the grand scheme of things I'm not really asking for very much. Despite everything, I still believe in what this government is doing. I still believe that these people don't deserve what they have and that we should do what we can to stop them. Perhaps I believe it now more than ever after having seen them in action."

Thompson considered. "That you want protection I understand," he said finally. "But why five minutes with Petrelli? Sure, the kid duped you. But there are other prisoners here I think you'd be more interested in meeting. Another man, for example, you might enjoy seeing suffer for what he's done to you and your family."

Mohinder swallowed with difficulty. This he hadn't been expecting.

But of course it made sense. The government had apprehended Sylar not long after Mohinder's father was killed. Despite public outcry, they hadn't executed him. They had to have been keeping him somewhere all this time and where better than the very lab where they experimented on people with special abilities? They wanted Peter's powers. That was true enough. But if they couldn't have them, would they settle for Sylar's?

Composing himself, Mohinder said, "Apparently Sylar's status has taken something of a blow since last we spoke of him if you'd rather I pay a visit to him than Petrelli."

"Petrelli is an important prisoner," Thompson admitted. "The most important we've ever had. But these days he and Sylar are a bit like vicious animals that have had their teeth removed. If it's Petrelli you want to see, I'm willing to arrange that. But only after we've verified the list is real."

Mohinder nodded. "Be my guest," he said.

The verification process was as predicted, which gave Mohinder little comfort. No doubt it was one of the more delicate stages of this rescue mission but when Thompson came back into the room after less than half an hour, all Mohinder could think was that their lack of precaution proved how little he mattered to them. After all, if they planned on killing him anyway, what did it matter if the list was real or if Mohinder wanted to see Peter?

"Take him downstairs," Thompson said to Bennet.

Mohinder followed his secret ally into an underground level, a kind of basement fashioned into operation theaters and prison cells. Many of the cells appeared open and empty but Mohinder was led past one with its door firmly closed. He imagined that this was Sylar's place of residence and shuddered to think of the man inside. Shuddered at the small flicker of sympathy as he thought of the lengths they must gone to in order to keep someone that powerful subdued for that long. Had they subjected Peter to similar measures?

Eventually, they came to a second closed door. Pulling a key from his belt, Bennet made a subtle show of revealing his gun to Mohinder, strapped in a holster at his waist. To the security cameras, the move may have looked like a threat but Mohinder knew what Bennet was indicating and nodded his understanding before stepping into the cell.

Once inside, Mohinder quickly caught sight of the figure on the bed and realized that in a plan that was full of opportunities for improvisation, there was one place they'd forgotten to take into consideration any contingencies that might arise.

Peter lay curled in on himself atop a thin mattress. He shivered violently, his teeth scraping together in loud grinding bursts of noise. His eyelids drooped in semi-consciousness while a string of drool ran unheeded down the side of his chin, pooling on the mattress. Caught in dreams, he mumbled to himself--rambling strings of words that defied understanding or interpretation. Bandages covered what Mohinder could see of his arms and legs. A few patches of blood had seeped through the thin t-shirt they'd given him, mostly around the chest and belly. Obviously drugged, it appeared that whatever they'd given him had interfered with his ability to fully heal himself.

He looked utterly broken.

Mohinder fought against the instinct to go to Peter, to reach out to him and brush his matted hair out of his face. To give him back his dignity. But the cameras watching him made any attempt at tenderness impossible. Remembering that he was meant to be a man confronting an adversary--enjoying his pain, even--Mohinder lifted his chin and squared his shoulders as his mind raced, trying to think of ways to get Peter out since he was obviously too weak to get himself out, as they had planned.

Feeling vaguely ridiculous, he concentrated on the act of sending a thought to Peter.

_Peter? Can you hear me?_

It took several tries before Peter's eyes flickered at all in what could have been reflex or recognition. There was no verbal response, but his brow furrowed slightly.

_Peter? Blink if you can hear me._

The motion was slow. The eyelids seemed to drag themselves down one at a time, the long eyelashes coming to rest on Peter's cheeks before climbing their way up again one after the other. Mohinder wasn't sure if it technically counted as a blink, but this wasn't the time for semantics.

_I'm going to get you out of here._

Peter's brow knotted itself more thoroughly and Mohinder sensed his distress. He mumbled in agitation, his attention on some unseen thing in the corner. Mohinder was left to wonder if there was any way to hush someone without speaking or appearing to do so.

"Nathan," Pete said in a sudden burst of coherence. "I can't leave Nathan. Please."

Mohinder clapped his hand over Peter's mouth. For the cameras, he tried to make it appear as though he were trying to cut off Peter's air with his hand and Peter reacted in contained panic, his moist, hot breath hitting Mohinder's open palm in short, rapid bursts.

_Can you stand? _Mohinder asked, hating that he could communicate to Peter but Peter couldn't communicate back to him. Matt had tried to give him advice on reading someone's thoughts through the expression on their face and their body language, but Peter was giving him little to go on.

"Stand up," Mohinder barked, stepping away from Peter, who remained still. "I said stand up." He kicked the side of the bed near Peter's face, startling him into a sitting position he couldn't quite maintain on his own. He slumped against the wall.

Clearly, running was out of the question. Dismayed, Mohinder walked to the door, unsure what he was going to do next. He stuck his head out and saw Bennet standing to the side, his face turned away. Without warning or thought, he rushed at the other man, knocking him to the ground.

They scuffled for a moment before Bennet allowed Mohinder to shove him against the wall. Bennet did what he could to protect the gun on his hip before throwing a punch that deliberately left the area wide open. Mohinder avoided Bennet's fist easily and grabbed the gun, making his way back into Peter's cell with it. He dragged Peter up roughly by his arm as Bennet entered the space after him. Mohinder pointed the gun at Peter's head. Bennet raised his hands as if in surrender.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Bennet shouted.

"What kind of an idiot do you think I am?" Mohinder growled in response, improvising on the spot. "I know what you're going to do now that you have that file. You're not going to protect me. You're going to kill me. So I'm taking this," he gave Peter a shove which nearly landed the other man on his knees, "to ensure that doesn't happen."

"Don't be stupid," Bennet said. "We can talk about this."

Mohinder snorted. "There's nothing to talk about," he said. "Get out of my way."

Bennet stood aside, allowing him to exit the room. Holding Peter in front of him like a shield, Mohinder was able to turn the nearest corner before alarms began blaring and he began to sense the urgent chase coming at them from all directions. Distantly, Mohinder was aware of a chaos of voices shouting at him and then the shooting started. Bullets flew at them, seeming to come from every direction. There was no place to take cover.

"Hold your fire!" Bennet was shouting to his men.

But the command came a moment too late as a burst of fiery pain hit Mohinder from behind. Vaguely, he heard himself cry out as he fell to the ground, dragging Peter with him. His head made contact with the wall hard and then there was nothing.

TBC


	18. Chapter 18

**A New Day at Midnight**

**Part 18/19**

Consciousness trickled reluctantly back to Mohinder an unknown amount of time later. Upon waking, he focused his eyes to find himself staring directly at the familiar sight of a smirking young man, arms outstretched as he floated in the air, yellow coat fanned out behind him like wings and knew it to be Isaac's painting of Peter taking flight, so ready to throw himself at the ground just to see if he would miss. One of the many he had seen in the loft countless times.

In dribs and drabs, Mohinder became aware of the thin mattress underneath him, the blanket that covered him from the waist down. Persistent, rhythmic bursts of thrumming pain blossomed in his head and shoulder. Wanting to feel the bandages that covered his wound, he attempted to lift his hand only to find it pinned in place by a warm weight.

Turning his head, Mohinder found himself nose to nose with Peter, whose cheek rested against Mohinder's good shoulder. Deeply asleep, days worth of stubble clung to the other man's hollow cheeks and his breath came in moist, intermittent bursts that tickled the side of Mohinder's neck. One bare arm was draped across Mohinder's waist as if anchoring him to the bed. Lines of worry wrinkled his forehead, half covered by those maddening bangs.

This was it. It came to Mohinder in a rush of emotion and memory. This was Peter's drawing. Two stick figures in bed, one on his back, the other on his side, sleeping in an affectionate embrace. After the car accident and the cemetery and the screaming girl and all the rest, this was the last piece of the future Peter had predicted all those weeks ago to come true. The final part of the puzzle to fall into place.

"You're doing it again."

The murmured admonition startled Mohinder from his awed revelation.

"Doing what?" he couldn't help but ask.

Without opening his eyes, Peter said, "Thinking. Loudly."

A burst of surprised laughter escaped Mohinder at this, jarring Peter slightly so that he was obliged to emerge more fully from sleep. Eyelids fluttering open, he yawned hugely, fingers kneading at the fabric of the sleep pants someone had taken the liberty of dressing Mohinder in--he hated to think of who. Focusing on Mohinder's face, his lips upturned into the utterly endearing lopsided smile Mohinder had fallen in love with in the first place.

"You really do have the most awful morning breath," Mohinder commented, wrinkling his nose.

"You love it," Peter replied in a sleepy murmur.

In another life, Mohinder might have jokingly protested, going into great and unnecessary detail about the many advantages of good oral hygiene, perhaps even a mock lecture on the exact number of bacteria that formed in the mouth during the night. But the old banter wouldn't come as Mohinder freed his good hand from where it had been caught beneath Peter, reaching up to cup Peter's cheek with the palm of his hand. Peter reached up as well, his fingers wrapping around Mohinder's wrist, his thumb delicately stroking Mohinder's pulse.

"I'm here," Peter said.

It was a testament to Peter's mind-reading ability that Mohinder hadn't even known he was thinking it until Peter said the words aloud. He took a breath, his mind flashing to the memory of Peter as he had been in that cell. Incapacitated by tranquilizers, physically torn apart…mentally absent. For all intents and purposes, unrecognizable as himself and utterly irretrievable.

Now, here he was, cognizant of his surroundings, gaze connecting with Mohinder's rather than searching out something just to the side of him. He looked like hell--unshaven, sleep-deprived, arms still covered in bandages as his body worked sluggishly to fully heal his injuries. But he was there. And they were in Isaac's loft, which meant the rescue mission had been a success, against all odds.

"What happened?" Mohinder asked, stroking Peter's hair away from his eyes. Part of him still couldn't quite believe that they hadn't been thrown back in time by some fluke of Peter's time traveling abilities, inherited from Hiro. "All I remember is…" Mohinder touched the bandage on his shoulder, wincing.

"Getting shot," Peter filled in for him.

"How did we get here?" Mohinder asked.

Peter propped himself on his elbow, lifting one shoulder in a half-shrug. "All I remember is waking up here," he said. "That was a couple of days ago."

"A couple of days?" Mohinder repeated, incredulous. A sudden wave of anxiety overtook him. "The others. They came in after us, didn't they? What happened to them?"

Peter smirked. "They're all staring at us right now," he said.

Mohinder imagined that there were a number of advantages to living in the wide open space of a loft, especially if one made his living as an artist. However, privacy was not included on that particular list. For the sake of modesty, a few makeshift partitions had been set up around the bed in which he and Peter were lying, but they concealed little from anyone who happened to be looking from the right angle. And indeed, Peter was right. Everyone else, perhaps detecting the movement and sound coming from Mohinder's bed, had paused in whatever activities they'd been engaged in to watch Mohinder and Peter's hushed exchange.

It was all Mohinder could do to keep from groaning.

Apparently having noticed that they were being noticed, Claude took it upon himself to be the first to speak. "Christ, it was only a shot in the shoulder," he said, approaching the two from where he'd been stationed at the window, staring out at the city. "What the bloody hell took you so long?"

Mohinder raised an eyebrow. "Worried about me, were you?"

"Hardly," Claude said. He pointed at Peter. "It's this one that's been driving the rest of us up the wall and back these past few days. First he's a complete space cadet from all those drugs they had him on. Then they flush out of his system and what happens? Drama queen that he is, he takes up residence here and refuses to talk to anyone until His Majesty deigns to grace us with his presence."

"I see," Mohinder said.

"I think what Claude is trying to say," Matt chimed in, "is that we were worried about you both and we're glad to see you're okay."

"I'm glad to be okay," Mohinder commented, pushing himself into a sitting position with no small effort. Peter sat with him, swinging his legs over the side of the bed so that his feet touched the floor, his back to Mohinder. "I was just asking Peter what happened."

"We wish we knew," Matt said. "I mean, a few hours after they let you in, the alarms started going off and the whole place went into high alert. People were rushing around. It was chaos. We started to move in but before we could get there, there was this sound like…I don't know. Feedback from a microphone or something. We thought some kind of a bomb had gone off."

"I don't remember that at all," Mohinder said, looking to Peter only to find him impassive as Matt filled in some of the blanks of their harrowing escape.

"The next thing we know Bennet is tearing out of that place like his ass is on fire with the two of you in tow. He's shoving you in the back seat of the car I'm driving and telling us to get the hell out of dodge. We drove around for a while in case we were being followed then we came back here. You'd been shot and you'd hurt your head. You were bleeding pretty bad, but we managed to stop it. And, like Claude said, Peter was pretty much out of it. It was scary." He shot a look at Peter before returning his attention back to Mohinder.

"But what happened to Bennet?" Mohinder asked.

"No idea," Matt said. "We haven't seen or heard from him since."

Mohinder swallowed. "You don't think…"

"We don't know," Matt said solemnly, glancing over his shoulder at Claire, whose eyes glistened and whose mouth was set in a grim line. "We don't know."

In the following days, a pall of silence fell over Isaac's loft as everyone waited for news of Bennet, muffling any joy that might have been felt at the overall success of the rescue mission. Feeling restless, Mohinder rose from bed against orders and began work on sorting out his father's list, searching for the formula he might have used to come up with the names he'd found. His shoulder pained him but he'd somehow managed to avoid any serious infection and began to properly heal without incident. To appease the others, he still took the time to rest but his mind was always working now, always on the list.

The others also focused themselves intently on the list, putting together a plan to begin contacting the people already on it. For his part, Peter participated and at times even refereed the sometimes heated discussions but it was clear he was doing so more out of a desperate need for a distraction rather than any renewed sense of purpose, as his friends might have hoped. Indeed, it at first seemed as though Peter was determined to delay dealing with what had happened to him until after the uncertainty of Bennet's fate had been lifted from his shoulders. He had a tendency to walk away from or otherwise divert any attempt that was made to get him to talk about his experiences but it seemed the one person he couldn't avoid entirely was Claire.

Initially, Mohinder had mourned the seeming reversal of the first tentative steps Peter had taken back toward him when he'd begun waking to find the other side of his bed not only empty but undisturbed. But as time went by, Mohinder began to suspect that Peter's absence from his sleeping arrangements had more to do with Peter's absence from sleep entirely rather than any particular reticence on his part. He often lay awake listening to the other man wander aimlessly among Isaac's paintings and then one night heard Claire's light steps join his. Their hushed exchanges soon became a nightly ritual. More often than not, Mohinder would listen to the murmur of their voices, unable to make out the words but one night they were standing closer than usual and, unable to contain his curiosity, he couldn't help but listen as they talked.

"The bitch of it is they had me so drugged up in that place I don't even remember any of it," Peter was saying.

"I do," Claire replied numbly. "I remember all of it."

A pause.

"I should have come sooner," Peter said guiltily.

"Yeah, you should have," Claire said. Less harshly, she added, "But I always thought you were dumb for leaving in the first place, so I'm probably the wrong person to ask."

"I'm sorry," Peter said, his voice threatening to crack.

"You already said that, like, a million times," Claire said and Mohinder imagined from the softness of her words that she was reaching out to rest a reassuring hand on Peter's shoulder. "What happened was messed up, okay? But it happened the way it happened and we can't change any of it now. And if there's one good thing about you coming when you did it's that you brought Mohinder with you, right?"

"Right," Peter said and Mohinder found he couldn't quite read his tone.

"Without him and that file of his, who knows what any of us would have done," Claire said musingly. "Who knows what you would have done without him."

Peter didn't respond.

"I think what bothers me the most is I always knew the government hated us," Claire continued. "But I don't think I knew how much until after they killed Nathan the way they did. And then what they did to us…" She trailed off.

"Yeah," Peter said softly.

"You're not going to go away again, are you?" Claire asked, her voice beginning to recede, now barely in Mohinder's earshot. "Not like you did before."

They were gone before Mohinder got a chance to hear Peter's answer.

The next day, a knock sounded on Isaac's door and as everyone tensed at once, Mohinder idly noted how routine this was all becoming to him. How very normal it was now to wait to answer a door until Matt had gotten a proper reading on the person standing on the other side. Only this time, Peter got there first, coming in from where he'd been spending time alone on the roof, brow knitted as he announced,

"It's Bennet. He's alone."

Claire needed no more encouragement. She ran for the door, throwing it open to find her father waiting patiently in the hall, apparently used to the scan to which he was being subjected.

"It's all right," Bennet murmured as Claire pulled him into a tight hug. "I'm all right. I was just a little delayed. Everything's fine."

"We thought you were dead," Claire choked out from where she'd buried her face in his neck.

"I'm right here," Bennet replied. A moment later, the two separated and Bennet came fully into the loft, closing the door behind him. Keeping one arm around Claire's shoulder, his eyes found first Mohinder and then Peter. "We need to talk," he said.

Sitting together at the table that had become the central location for all such informal debriefings, Bennet was able to fill in the missing pieces to the story of Mohinder and Peter's narrow escape from the facility.

"Mohinder was shot and the two of you went down," he said, picking up where Mohinder's memories left off. "A few of the agents, including myself, moved in, ready to apprehend both of you. I thought it was over. Then one of my men grabbed Peter." He shifted his gaze to Peter, eyeing him warily. "All I remember is that there was this…piercing noise. It came from nowhere and it filled my head. I passed out."

"Like feedback from a microphone," Matt commented. "We heard it outside the building."

"Something like that," Bennet agreed.

"But what made the noise?" Mohinder said.

"Peter did," Bennet replied. "I think, in his panic, he managed to override some of the tranquilizers in his system enough to generate some kind of psychic outburst. It took out everything. Our communications were disrupted, our cameras were destroyed, our people were down. We were dead in the water, so to speak."

"And you took advantage," Mohinder guessed.

Bennet nodded. "After I woke up, I was able to drag you to safety before anyone else was roused enough to realize what was happening," he said. "Because the security system was offline, there was no proof of what I'd done. When I was questioned, I told Thompson that Mohinder recovered before I did, that the wound from the shot that had taken him down wasn't as serious as it first appeared and that he forced me to lead him out of the building at gunpoint to an escape car he had waiting for him on the street."

"I think I saw that on a cop show once," Isaac commented.

Bennet ignored him. "Needless to say, my colleagues are not impressed with me at the moment for letting their prize prisoner get away," he said. "There's been some discussion of an investigation into the matter, which is why I wasn't able to risk coming here until now. The important thing is that so far Thompson still trusts me, so I see no reason to worry."

Despite his words, Bennet still sounded deeply annoyed that his reputation had been sullied by the less than perfect execution of what was already a less than perfect plan.

He turned to Mohinder. "You, on the other hand, now have the honor of being one of the most wanted men in the country," he said. "I understand that's something of a rite of passage around here."

"You're one of us now, mate," Claude said, at once teasing and grim. "Best get used to it."

Later, when the crowd had dispersed and everyone had gone back to their respective corners, Mohinder felt a presence over his shoulder as he sat at his computer and was surprised when he turned to see Bennet standing there, gazing at the names on the screen.

"That's it, then?" he said. "That's the real list?"

"Yes," Mohinder said.

Bennet nodded. "By now the government knows that the list you gave them was a fake," he said. "It's only a matter of time before they also figure out you were acting on behalf of the resistance when you took Peter from them." He sighed. "Claude's right, by the way. You're a part of it now. Whether you like it or not."

Mohinder pressed his lips together. He knew that by saving Peter, he had made an irrevocable declaration of loyalty that equated him with the very people he'd been working against for so long. For better or worse, he was chained to them now. He would never be able to return to his old life or his old beliefs. He could never go back.

It was useless to pretend that this didn't frighten him, that he didn't in his darker moments have second thoughts as to whether or not he'd done the right thing and so he said nothing.

Bennet cleared his throat. "You asked me before about the password your father chose for his file," he said, reaching into an inside pocket of the coat he wore. He pulled out a small pile of neatly folded papers and handed them to Mohinder, who unfolded them curiously.

What he saw was his father's handwriting. Rather, a photocopy of his father's handwriting, scrawled across what must have been the lined pages of a spiral notebook. Excerpts from one of the many journals the government had stolen following his father's death. Mohinder scanned the entries quickly, doing what he could to skip over the numerous references to "Patient Zero"--the code name his father had bestowed upon the man who would be his killer. At first, it was all he could see and then another name began to jump out at him.

_I think of Shanti every day, _Mohinder read, a cold feeling pouring down his spine. _I can't bear to think of her living in a world that would mean her the kind of harm I now see being perpetrated on those like her. What kind of woman would she be? My beautiful daughter. _Mohinder's mind tripped over the last word and he was forced to read it again: _My beautiful daughter._

He looked up to find Bennet watching him carefully, waiting for a reaction.

"Your sister died at a young age," he explained. "Before you were born. As young as she was, your father was still able to see in her some kind of special ability. In all his journal entries, he never specified what that ability was. Either way, that's why he took such a personal interest in this new evolution." Bennet paused. "Helping people with abilities, trying to understand them better and helping them to understand themselves better was his way of paying tribute to her memory. I believe that's why her name was the password that protected the names of the other people your father discovered, including Claire and Peter."

Mohinder swallowed with difficulty.

"My point is," Bennet continued, "I know you don't believe in the cause yet. You believe in Peter. There's a difference." He lifted his shoulders. "I just thought I'd give you something to think about. A bigger context for you to work with. One that doesn't involve Sylar."

Mohinder nodded, a deep bowing of his head. "Thank you." It was all he could think to say and so he said it again. "Thank you."


	19. Chapter 19

**A New Day at Midnight**

**Part 19/19**

Mohinder spent the next few days poring over his fathers words, regretting that Bennet hadn't been able to risk bringing him the journals in their entirety. In the few excerpts he had been given, his father offered little to no detail about what it was Shanti could do or even how she had died. But in the lingering grief of the little girl's death, Mohinder began to understand the purpose with which his father had pursued his work, even as Patient Zero's tendency toward violent instability made itself known in the more recent entries.

He'd once believed his father had died from stupidity, his single-minded curiosity blinding him to what should have been an obvious danger. But really his father, having witnessed the lengths Sylar was willing to go to in order to acquire new abilities, had sacrificed himself in the name of a greater cause. Sylar had wanted the names on the list and Chandra had died protecting them--these people he'd never even met. Faces he'd never seen.

But Mohinder had seen those faces. He'd met those people. Some of them, at any rate. He knew what he was up against and now, he came to realize, it was time to decide whether he could put aside the anger that had been a part of him for so long and pick up where his father had left off. Not a betrayal of his memory, but a tribute to it. The same way Chandra had honored Shanti.

Mulling over this very question, Mohinder went to the roof only to find it already occupied. Peter sat in a precariously half-unfolded lawn chair, hunched over something he had balanced in his lap, tipped slightly away as if toward a more desirable light. Apology for the intrusion already on his lips, Mohinder turned to go when something made him pause. It took him a moment to realize what it was and then it came to him: Peter was visible.

In his time with Peter since learning of his abilities, Mohinder had learned that Peter's tendency toward brooding generally took several forms. Hiding on the roof by himself was one thing but it was only when he made himself invisible that he truly didn't want to be approached. Now he seemed merely contemplative, enjoying a moment of solitude away from the activity of the loft. Absorbed as he was in whatever he was looking at, the moment positively invited interruption and so Mohinder took advantage.

"What's that?" he asked, stepping closer to the other man in an attempt to catch a glimpse at what had so captured his attention.

Peter twisted in his chair to look up at Mohinder. Wordlessly, he held the object out and Mohinder took it in his own hands before he had a chance to realize what it was he was seeing. When it finally registered, the heat of embarrassment bloomed in his cheeks and he nearly dropped what he was holding.

All this time, he'd heard about the painting without ever actually seeing it. Mostly, it was treated as a joke brought up only when someone wished to provoke Isaac's ire. Looking at it now, Mohinder saw that it was no joke at all.

Most of Isaac's finished paintings tended to appear as though they belonged as panels in the pages of a comic book. But this image was softer, not as conducive to the addition of thought or speech bubbles. Instead, the moment was complete with just himself and Peter in bed together, caught in a scene of urgent passion. In the image, Peter was on all fours, teeth clenched and hands tightly fisted in tousled sheets as Mohinder entered him from behind, pressing a soothing kiss to the back of his shoulder. The act itself was covered by a white sheet that slipped precariously at their waists but the light from a window behind them threw the connection of their bodies into an easily discernible silhouette.

Mohinder was horrified. He felt violated. And yet something in him stirred ever so slightly at the memory of what moments like these felt like with Peter.

"Well," was all he could think to say, handing the painting back to Peter and seating himself beside the other man in a second lawn chair that had been set out as if in anticipation of company.

"Yeah," Peter replied.

"Poor Isaac," Mohinder added.

Peter laughed lightly but said nothing.

"May I ask what inspired you to unearth Isaac's least prized possession? Last I heard, he'd hidden it in some unknown corner of the loft, never to see the light of day again."

"I'm surprised he didn't burn it," Peter said. "Actually, I wasn't looking for it. I just kind of stumbled on it when I went looking for cleaning supplies. The bathroom was really disgusting the other day."

Mohinder raised an eyebrow, thinking how incongruous it was to talk of something so domestic as cleaning a bathroom in a place filled with the very people the government would like nothing more than to kill or put away for life.

"I don't know," Peter continued, a little guilty now. "I guess I couldn't stop looking at it. You know, once I got over the initial weirdness of knowing everyone else had seen it." He rolled his eyes before turning his gaze to the small canvas on his lap. "It's kind of beautiful. Isn't it?"

Mohinder wasn't sure if Peter was referring to the quality of Isaac's work or the moment it portrayed. Favoring the latter interpretation, he replied, "It is. Very beautiful."

Peter nodded solemnly. After a moment he said, "I messed up."

"We both did," Mohinder said.

Peter accepted this with a nod. No further elaboration seemed to be needed. "Now what?" he said.

"I haven't the slightest idea," Mohinder confessed, thinking of the question that had been bothering him since Bennet had gifted him with his father's journal entries.

"I told Claire I was going to stay this time," Peter said. He waited for this to settle between them. "I wasn't sure I meant it when I said it but…it's what I want." He cleared his throat. "You could go, though. If you wanted. You don't even have to remember that any of this happened."

"The Haitian, you mean?" Mohinder said. Peter nodded. "Well, at least you had the courtesy to ask before you erased my memories. I just think you might find it a bit difficult seeing as you're without your means of contacting this mysterious man. Unless that's another power of yours I don't know about."

One side of Peter's mouth quirked up in a half smile. "No, I've stayed away from that one," he said. "As for the wind chimes…" He shrugged.

As Peter trailed off, realization dawned on Mohinder and a burst of disbelieving laughter escaped him. "Don't tell me you actually know where they are," he said. Peter hummed comically and looked away, apparently enjoying his ability to inspire Mohinder's mirth. "You do!" Mohinder exclaimed. "You hid them! But why?"

Peter's smile faded. "Because after Nathan died there was a time when the others thought it might be better if I didn't remember," he said darkly. "And I didn't want to forget."

"That's a bit extreme," Mohinder commented.

"It was an extreme situation," Peter admitted. "Drama queen that I am. As Claude would say." He made a face. "Anyway, they didn't tell me any of this but I overheard their thoughts about it. So I hid the wind chimes and left town. To be honest, I kind of thought they would have found them by now. I guess I hid them better than I thought. And the Haitian hasn't exactly tried to contact them on his own, so…"

Mohinder shook his head. "I was sure the Haitian was a myth," he said. "That the wind chimes were nothing more than a running joke."

"No," Peter said, now utterly serious. "He's real. And we can use him, if you want. I mean, we'll protect you. Make sure they don't come after you."

"Since I won't even remember what it is I did wrong," Mohinder noted wryly.

A silence fell between them. Peter twitched and Mohinder guessed he was probably doing everything he could to respect the privacy of Mohinder's thoughts while waiting for his answer. Mohinder did what he could to help Peter's effort by shielding his mind from the other man as he considered the problem before them.

Idly, he reached out for the painting and Peter handed it to him. He ran his hands over the image Isaac had rendered, thinking of Peter's stick figures, lying so peacefully in bed with one another. He knew now which moment Peter's drawing portrayed, but found that this one was still a mystery to him. It could have been any moment over the course of their sexual relationship and yet it seemed too specific for that. The way the sunlight fell over their bodies, the arrangement of what little furniture Mohinder could see in the room. The curtains on the window, billowing in the breeze.

The curtains on the window.

"Odd," Mohinder said.

"What?" Peter asked, leaning over.

"How accurate would you say Isaac is when it comes to the details in his paintings?" Mohinder asked. "The little things, I mean. Does he ever get anything wrong?"

Brow furrowed, Peter shook his head. "No," he said. "Usually you could take a picture of the moment when it actually happens and it'll match up exactly to how Isaac paints it. Literally. Why?"

"Because," Mohinder said, "I never had curtains in my apartment. Only blinds. Your apartment was the same way." He shook his head. "I don't believe we ever made love in a room that had curtains like that." He paused. "Not yet anyway."

For a moment, Peter continued to look at the painting, uncomprehending. Then understanding emerged in the light of his expression. "It's the future," he murmured. "It hasn't happened yet."

Then, as if the painting had granted him some kind of permission, he leaned over the arms of their two chairs and pulled Mohinder to him, pressing their lips together in passionate reunion. Mohinder accepted the kiss eagerly, bringing his hand around the back of Peter's neck, ensuring that he wouldn't pull away. That this time he wouldn't think of running.

That this time neither of them would have to.

END

_I hope you enjoyed the story. Thanks so much for reading!_


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